Just Another Tuesday
by BrightestDarkness
Summary: In the year 2154, the citizens under the Council suffered a rude awakening when they were assaulted by strange foes beyond imagining, and were aided by mighty allies, who operated beyond reason. The civilizations of the galaxy called this event the most unexpected discovery of all time. The humans called it Tuesday. AU/Fusion.
1. It Was A Day Unlike Any Other

**Prologue:**

"3 Billion credits….3 Spirits-cursed billion. Spirits, what the hell are these…people, that they can cause three billion credits to the Citadel and then pass it off as a grand victory!"

"They call themselves the Avengers, sir."

"I don't give a damn what they are called! I was still in the building when the giant green monstrosity used it as a club to rearrange the face of that oversized mechanical- what's it called?"

"It's called a Sentinel, sir."

"Then that flying robot man—

"Iron Man, s-"

"Shut up."

"Yes sir."

"That flying robotic jackass blew up the Presidium, trying to kill the same giant Sentinel, and then the bloody thing gets up again anyway!"

"Let's not forget the hammer wielding holigan that punched a hole through the Citadel. All of it."

"….You know what I don't care anymore. Just get them off this station."

"Yes sir."

What a day.

Councilor Sparatus collapsed on his chair, exhausted. Sitting amid the ruins of his office, within the wreckage of the once proud Citadel Tower, Sparatus pondered in silence. Not much of a tower now, considering its been turned horizontal by a giant green monster. It was miracle that no one was killed.

He sighs as another piece of the ceiling drops falls to the floor. He really should move, the terrain was getting rather unstable, but the thought of getting crushed to death was rather appealing considering that he still had to see to the deportation of these "Avengers".

He should see if Tevos and Valern were okay, he still needed the full Council if he wanted get to this "First Contact" event over with, get those maniacs deported, and started on Citadel repairs.

Unfortunately his plans would never come to fruition.

Before Sparatus could even finish his train of thought, the same aide he sent out to remove the Avengers, came back panting and huffing, eyes wide with terror.

"Sir….we have a problem."

Sparatus tensed up, "What is it?"

"It's best if you see yourself sir."

With that statement, the aide opened his omnitool and began playing a message.

"ATTENTION MORTALS, I AM GALACTUS, DEVOUR OF WORLDS. I HAVE COME TO FEED, I WILL HAVE MY SUSTENANCE! RUN IF YOU CAN, BUT ALL WHO TRY TO STOP ME WILL FAIL!"

Sparatus held his blank expression for a full minute before turning to his aide again.

"The Citadel isn't a planet….It knows that right?"

"It's talking about Palaven sir."

"Spirits fu-"

And thus a day unlike any other was upon them.

...

A few months after Palaven was nearly eaten, invaded by green people, and then set on fire by a purple-skinned jackass with a shiny gauntlet, the first peace talks between the representatives of Earth and Citadel Council were to be held.

On this momentous occasion, the Citadel Council did their best to put their best foot forward, and each Councilor was prepared to display to full capability of the Citadel races. They fully expected to impress the humans with their overall technological superiority.

Unfortunately, though means of blackmail and political maneuvering, among the Earth's representatives stood one Dr. Doom, ruler of Latveria and rival to the now sadly deceased Dr. Reed Richards. Despite this fact, Doom's century old grudge has not faded in least, likely due to the fact that he expects Richards to be back from the dead by the end of the month.

As the numerous races gathered together to watch and possibly welcome the (supposed) newcomers to the galactic scene, the shuttles bringing the representatives of Earth opened to reveal nothing in them.

Five seconds later, a flash, and an infinite number of atoms shot across the universe at light speed later, the Earth representatives materialized in front of them. Before them stood some of the horribly dressed individuals they had ever seen.

Each of them was wearing something astoundingly absurd, but they couldn't tell which of them was the worst dressed. Considering that one wore full metal armor under a robe and hood, while another was bald, clad in all leather up to his eye patch, but both were beat out by a young man wearing robes that belonged in that Galaxy of Fantasy game. It was with great disbelief that the people there that day stated the most normally dressed was a young woman wearing what seemed to be a military uniform with a ridiculous number of stars and stripes on it, while holding a circular shield under her arm.

A moment of silence passed before the representatives strode up and entered the newly redesigned Citadel Ground Tower, left in its horizontal state by baffled keepers and confused architects.

When they entered the main doors into the council audience chamber, silence reigned supreme, broken only at certain moments in time by the imposing footsteps of humanity.

The Councilors of the Citadel stood up to address their guests, as the humans stood below them, on the platform.

"I am Counci-"

"Your technology is pathetic."

Tevos sputtered in indignation and surprise, turning to gaze upon the face of the metal man who made that statement.

"What!"

"Doom is embarrassed for you about your technological state; Doom is disgusted that you are only capable of advanced flight through space. Then again, I didn't expect much from fools couldn't even accomplish the basics of teleportation. "

Tevos didn't know how to respond to this accusation, and neither did her colleagues. This was certainly not how she expected the talks to start. Then, the scowling hairless man wearing an odd amount of leather took it upon himself to rectify the situation.

"Doom, shut up and go stand behind the group. I have no goddamn clue how you got on this committee anyway," Fury said, with a growing scowl.

"Bah, Doom doesn't need to talk to creatures of inferior intellectual caliber, that duty falls fittingly to you, Fury. Doom is simply here to survey the failings of our new "acquaintances"."

Fury's scowl deepened as he glared at Doom, and Doom glared back, presumably, from under his mask.

The three Councilors looked on uneasily at the humans before them, hoping to avoid another incident at the Citadel.

Thankfully the young woman among the humans seemed to have the most sense, as she took a step between her clashing companions.

"Ahem," The Council's attention was quickly refocused to the human in the uniform. "Forgive us for the prior statements Councilors. I'm Captain Tonya Rogers, this is Colonel Nicholas Fury, our esteemed Sorcerer Supreme Dr. Conrad Verner, and uh, Dr. Victor Von Doom, ruler of Latveria."

Tevos felt herself relax slightly. At least one of them could function as a diplomat.

"Pleased to meet you Tonya, I am Councilor Tevos."

"I am Councilor Sparatus."

"And I am Councilor Valern."

And with a slight smile on her face, Tevos spoke again.

"Welcome to the Citadel."

And with that being said, the moment was complete. Or it would have been if Conrad hadn't spoken.

"Hey, do you guys have a toilet around here. Being Sorcerer Supreme doesn't exempt me from urinary action, if you know what I mean."

Tonya Rogers palm quickly collided with her face in a quick motion, developed by constant practice through being around Conrad.

"Goddamnit."

And thus came the statement that would be used to describe the next five years.

In the year 2154, the citizens under the Council suffered a rude awakening when they were assaulted by strange foes beyond imagining, and were aided by mighty allies, who operated beyond reason.

The civilizations of the galaxy called this event the most unexpected discovery of all time.

The humans called it Tuesday.

_**JUST ANOTHER TUESDAY**_


	2. Eden Prime: Issue 1

**Crap from the Author that you'll probably skip : **I own nothing from Marvel or Mass Effect, and I don't plan on dealing with combined lawsuit from Disney and EA. The rest of the content is just a theoretical piece on what would happen if we found a relatively sane Science Fiction reality and induced it with regular doses of enhanced acid and steroids.

**Eden Prime: Off the Rails We Go!**

_A year later_…

The Normandy: the first blend of Repulsor and Eezo technology, the first collaboration between the brightest minds of Earth and the Council, the first in line for defend and peacekeeping. It was of unique design and the only one of its kind.

If one was to disregard reports of the Latvian monarch/scientist/recent ambassador building his own ships out of pure spite of course.

Its first assignment was to go to Eden Prime, a relatively new colony established by Stark Industries, and help with the retrieval of a certain artifact. The job seemed simple enough.

As the Normandy came out the relay-induced travel, the crew began their preparations for the intended coordinates. Before long, Eden Prime lay before them.

"Thrusters…Check. Navigation…Check. Internal heating…ah hell we're fine."

Nihlus frowned at the unprofessionalism of the pilot. "Check it completely. I am sure your Captain would appreciate it."

Nihlus received the finger for his efforts. Nihlus glared hard before turning to leave. Jeffery "Joker" Storm really wasn't the most professional pilot, but his expertise at flying, with and without a vehicle, made him invaluable as a pilot.

This, however, didn't exempt him from disciplinary action though, and Nihlus swore to himself he would see to it that Flight Lieutenant Storm be addressed accordingly for this.

Kaiden Alenko turned towards his friend with a face of annoyance.

"He asks you to do your job….. so you flip him off?

"Hey, I am doing my job. I just jumped us from half way across the universe and hit a target the size of a pinhead, could've done that without the ship itself by the way, so that's a job well done in my book. Besides, I don't like having Spectres on board. They're trouble."

Alenko rolled his eyes.

"We're all trouble Joker; you especially considering that you're a walking fire hazard. Besides, the Council did help build the ship so that gives them the right to send someone to watch their investment."

"Still doesn't mean I trust them though."

"Stay focused, Flight Lieutenant Storm. We don't ask questions, we follow orders."

Joker ignited slightly at the voice coming from behind him, before patting the flames on his chair off. He hated it when Agent Shepard snuck up on him like that.

"Relax Shepard, we just talking. No harm in that."

Shepard tilted his head at Joker and gave the pilot a small smirk.

"Bridge! Status report!"

After patting down his chair again, Joker opened his mouth to respond but was quickly shot down, leading to a few chuckles from Alenko.

"Storm, just be quiet. Alenko, speak."

"Just cleared the relay sir, scanning has been engaged. All systems look fine."

"Good. Keep the comm lines open back to the Helicarrier. I want mission reports sent back to Fury before we hit Eden Prime. And send Shepard over here"

"Yes sir."

Joker frowned disapprovingly at controls in front of him while Alenko struggled to keep his smirk off his face. Shepard nodded and headed off.

As Shepard entered the debriefing room, he found only Nihlus standing before him, starring up at a screen showing images of Eden Prime.

"Ah, Agent Shepard. I was hoping you would get here first. It would give us a chance to talk."

Shepard narrowed his eyes slightly, studying the Spectre before him.

"About?"

"I heard Eden Prime is quite beautiful, I am interested in knowing more about this place."

Shepard tilted his head quizzically at Nihlus before replying.

"I wouldn't know, sir. Never been there. That isn't what you really wanted to ask, is it?"

Nihlus hesitated for a millisecond before readjusting.

"Anderson said you were very observant."

"It's a helpful trait for a SHIELD Agent."

Nihlus gave what seemed to be the Turian version of a frown.

"Shepard, answer me this truthfully: Do you believe humanity is truly ready for this. For joining the galactic community."

Shepard jaw dropped open slightly, looking a bit insulted.

"Spectre, with all due respect, I think the real question is if the Universe is ready for us. We have been invaded annually by shape shifting green assholes, Norse gods, Robot overlords, and versions of ourselves from the future. Earth has been driven beyond ruin then reset more than we could count and you're asking me if we are ready if we are ready for space? You think the Council is ready to deal with our baggage? "

Nihlus pondered that statement for a moment before Anderson walked in sucking on what appeared to be a blood pack and enabled the shades for room while muttering curses at the sun under his breath.

Anderson snarled as the last bit of sun went away and his skin stopped sizzling. Listening carefully Nihlus heard Anderson mutter a few words under his breath.

"Hate doing that, damn sun. Got nothing here but A-type blood. Tastes like crap."

Nihlus started questioning how normal the Captain actually was. From what little he knew about the humans, he was pretty sure they didn't burn up from light, or drink blood. That would be silly…right?

"Ah, Shepard, Nihlus, now that your both here we can begin. Shepard, as you probably read in the memo, this isn't a random survey mission, but a package retrieval assignment. As you have already read in the mission report, we are picking up a Prothean artifact. Should be straightforward grab so get your team ready to-"

"Captain, we got a problem. Transmission from Eden Prime here, you might want to check this out."

What quickly followed Joker's announcement was a blurry video, brought up on screen, of what seemed to be men being slaughtered by a giant squid-like machine that was mounted by another smaller bipedal figure. Screams and fire dominated most of the content. How very typical. The damn colony wasn't even a year old yet.

Anderson sighed. "Shepard, assemble your team, you know what to do."

Shepard was out of the room before Anderson finished talking. It wasn't the first time SHIELD had to handle a situation such as this.

All this happened, while Nihlus stood frozen, still processing the situation that had already been responded to.

"Was that a giant squid being rode on by a giant man coming down from the sky?"

Anderson rolled his eyes. Bloody amateur.

…

"Shepard, your team is the muscle for this operation Agent. Head straight for the dig site. Don't stop for anything." Ordered Anderson.

As Nihlus walked by the group, Jenkins, recent trainee of SHIELD, turned to look at the Turian Spectre.

"Nihlus, you're not coming with us?"

Turning to address the human rookie in the red armor, Nihlus replied.

"I move faster on my own."

"The mission is yours now Shepard, Nihlus will keep you updated, and Joker will recon the area if possible. The rest is up to you. Good luck." Said Anderson.

Shepard nodded.

"Aye sir. Disembarking now."

Nihlus watched in disbelief as Shepard, Kaiden, and Jenkins all jumped off the still airborne ship.

"They…have a safe means to get down….right?"

Anderson chuckled at the Spectre.

"Don't worry Nihlus, Alenko will catch them all with his mind."

"Oh oka—wait! How does that even work? No biotic can do that!"

Anderson looked at Nihlus like he was stupid.

"Who said anything about biotics. Alenko is a Beta-level telekinetic mutant."

Nihlus looked at Anderson like the human was shitting him.

"….What's a mutant?"

Anderson began to pinch his nose bridge. Why the hell hasn't anyone on the ambassador's committee told the Council anything about the humans yet? Oh wait right, cause friggin' Doom was the ambassador.

…

Jenkins looked around him and shivered. The despite the area around them were composed of mostly trees, logs, and dirt, the smell of burnt flesh and ash could be smelt clearly in the air.

"Man, we just move in on this colony six months ago, now it's all burnt down. Ms. Stark must be pissed about this."

Kaiden snorted at that statement. "This probably isn't going register as a footnote considering her wealth. This place will likely be rebuilt before the week is over."

"Stow it both of you," Injected Shepard. "Stay focused on the mission."

"Aye Sir."

Shepard activated his holographic map and quickly marked down the path towards the package. If they were fast, maybe they could avoid most of the trouble. He quickly realized how wrong he was when Jenkins's brain matter was splattered all over his arm.

"…Shit. CONTACT!"

"Alenko, kinetic shield up now!"

Kaiden Alenko reached out using his mind and held strong against the hail of bullets that descended upon them like raindrops from a thunderstorm. Then with a gesture of his hand, the sound of compressing metal and failing circuitry filled the air.

Shepard gave Kaiden a tap on the shoulder to let him no that there were no more hostiles in the area.

Both of them turned to look upon where Jenkins fell.

The poor kid's head was punched clean through. Shepard pulled off Jenkins dog tags while Kaiden lowered his head.

"Jesus…it was his first drop. He was going on and on about how he was gonna…and now—Shepard, we just landed here, and we're already being hit. They know exactly where we are."

Shepard grimaced as he put his next orders into words.

"Kaiden…leave his body. We can come back and retrieve it to properly grieve for him later. Right now, we are changing routes, away from the designated mission path. I have a feeling the entire path going to be this way, so we're going to take the long way around."

Kaiden took one last glance at Jenkin's corpse, and turned away, following Shepard on a small dirt path.

Shepard took a quick glance at the crushed pieces from the machines that killed Jenkins. A lifeless light bulb of a head seemed to look right back at him. Shepard muttered a curse under his breath. At least they weren't Sentinels.

_An hour later..._

Long after Shepard and Alenko left, a gasp was heard and man sat up from a puddle of his own blood.

Jenkins felt his head for injury and realized it had healed. Looking around, there was no one around him anymore. Jenkins whimpered; he hated it when this happened.

"Why does everyone keep forgetting that I can heal?"

…

Nihlus kept his eyes and ears open. So far he has passed by five camps, and none of them have any survivors. What really, unnerved him the most were the spikes that lay around the battlefield. It was like something the Krogans used to do to break morale.

Looking onwards, Nihlus saw the spaceport come into view. Something was obviously wrong here though (If the numerous dead and burning things didn't give that away.). Nihlus stopped dead when he noticed that there was no damage done to structures around area at all. It stood out as a picture of tranquility in a land on fire.

Nihlus decided to press on with distance and caution. By the time he got within fifty meters of the area, he looked through his scope. What he saw made his heart drop.

Activating his communicator, he contacted the Normandy.

"Normandy, this is Nihlus, there are Geth here."

"_Geth? Didn't the Council say they haven't been seen in years? What are they doing here on a human colony_?" Responded Anderson.

"I have no idea, but they set an operation here, and are planning something big. They look like they are moving a platoon's worth of units on the trams and going off to the dig site. Nihlus out."

By the time he finished this statement, the tram suddenly exploded, and everything went to hell at the spaceport.

Trying to see through the smoke, Nihlus could only see a figure firing some kind of beam weapon at the disoriented Geth groups. Unclear on what to do Nihlus moved in closer to get a better perspective on the situation.

The spaceport wasn't so tranquil now, with dead machines and scorches all over the area. Keeping a close eye on his radar, Nihlus switched to his rifle and began moving towards the sound of the shooting.

Sensing a movement coming toward, Nihlus turned to open fire on the hidden figure that was supposedly standing right before him. Then a heavily damaged Geth trudged through the smoke and collapsed. Realizing the machine was down, Nihlus lowered his gun to get a better look at the Geth.

He was then promptly tackled from behind, thrown to the floor, and unceremoniously bashed between the legs.

Howling in pain and kicking wildly, Nihlus tried to fight off his assailant but was held down by a boot, and found himself look up the wrong end of a repulsor rifle.

Then the second surprise hit Nihlus that day. Looking up beyond the gun he could see a bruised, but familiar individual that seemed like he was equally shocked.

"Saren! What are you doing here?"

The bruised older Turian gave him a weary smile and removed his leg from Nihlus's chest, allowing him to get back up.

"Likely same reason you're here: Council business. Blasted Geth have been hounding me ever since my brother dropped me off on this planet."

Nihlus rubbed his groin in misery while Saren shot him an apologetic glance. Trying to distract himself from the pain, Nihlus continued on with the dialogue.

"So, you're here for the Prothean beacon too? Thought, the Council would have more faith in me."

Saren looked at him with an eye raised.

"No… I'm not here to recover a beacon Nihlus; I'm to retrieve here to retrieve an actual Prothean. There's a beacon here too?"

Nihlus certainly didn't see that coming.

"Huh. Uh, well, this certainly complicates things."

Saren chuckled to himself. How very typical of the Council.

Nihlus sighed.

"I'm calling the Normandy. The Captain won't like this at all.

…

Shepard and Kaiden continued to head down the path they were on. So far they encountered minimal resistance in the form of floating scouts that were easily dispatched.

Then five shots rang out from the woods, and then nothing. Shepard shot Kaiden a quick glance, and they began maneuver towards where the sound originated. Proceeding with caution, Kaiden and Shepard entered the camp that was once full of numerous Stark employees.

Before them lay an entire army of robot foes, all undamaged except for the perfect headshot that all of them shared. Atop their husks stood a disheveled young woman in a jacket that had a target image on the back, with her hair in a bun, with a pistol in one hand and a knife in her other.

She locked her eyes on Shepard and his group, seemingly scanning for intent, before speaking.

"You guys SHIELD?"

Shepard kept his hand close to his gun.

"Yeah."

With his confirmation, she holstered her weapons.

"Well, you guys are late. Ashley Williams, Stark security detail."

"Agent Shepard. You okay Williams."

She looked uneasy for a minute. "Yeah, I'm fine, just a few scrapes and burns. Rest my group weren't so lucky. We were just patrolling the perimeter when those robot things hit us. Most of us were cut down in seconds; the rest of the guys didn't stand a chance. I've been killing these flashlights ever since."

Shepard's look softened. He certainly understood the pain of losing men. Elsewhere Jenkins was going in the opposite direction from the objective.

"It's not your fault Williams, nothing you could have done would've saved them."

Ashley turned away from him. It was hard for Ashley to accept his words, despite the truth in them.

"They must've come for the beacon. The spaceport is close, just over that rise, the trams should take us to the artifact."

Shepard nodded.

"Lead on Williams."

"Aye, aye Shepard, its time for payback."

…

Anderson could feel his a migraine coming on. First an invasion in the middle of a secretive retrieval mission, and now there was an actual Prothean there. If this keeps up he would probably need to call the Avengers in.

Sensing the silence on the other side, Nihlus was probably expecting an answer.

"So what we basically have to deal with now is the issue of two different retrieval missions running at the same time, one coming up without my knowledge while also relating to another Spectre, during an invasion."

"_Yeah."_

"Anderson sighed.

"Continue on if you must, but don't leave Shepard's team in the dark. He should know about this."

"_I'll be sure t—GETH! GET DOWN!"_

As sounds of fighting came over the communicator, Anderson sensed a mission going FUBAR. The only way this was going to get worse was if some world ending threat gets involved.

"Uh, Captain?" Chimed in Joker's voice, with a slight hint of panic present.

"What is it?"

"You remember that squid machine and the figure riding on top of it?"

Anderson didn't like where this was going.

"Yeah?"

The screen flared to life, displaying a much clearer image of what seemed to be a giant robotic squid wrecking havoc across the land while heading straight towards the spaceport. This wasn't the part that made Anderson drop his blood pack though.

The thing that wanted to make Anderson want to void his bowels was the fact that the figure riding on the squid's back looked extremely similar to a Celestial.

Anderson watched in stunned silence as he realized what he needed to do.

"Joker, call the Avengers! Call Fury! Call whoever we need to! They're not going to be able to last down there."

"Aye, aye Captain."

"God help us all."

…

"Saren! Watch your right."

"I got it under control, you just keep the left suppressed."

"This is turning out just like Tuchanka."

"We must remember Tuchanka very differently then."

Like two cogs in a machine, the Spectres fought in unison against foes previously unseen that were both endless in number and relentless in their pursuit of their objective.

As shots filled the air, Nihlus felt the wind on the back of his neck rustle and the sky darken. Falling behind cover and looking upward, a massive squid ship came into view and swarms of Geth units dropping out of it blocked out of the sun.

They were effectively fighting in the shade now.

As Saren shields broke, causing him to fall into cover next to Nihlus, they both realized their predicament was likely fatal.

"Hope Anderson gets help, and fast."

Saren chuckled. "We're Spectres, we are the help."

Nihlus laughed at statement. Saren definitely had a point.

They shared a grin before standing up and firing at the horde of machines

It was a hopeless endeavor, fighting against a literal sea of machines that blocked out the sun, but they were Turian, they were Spectre, so they would fight beyond the bitter end if they had to.

After all, they were the help.

…

_How much longer must I wait…_

_**Soon…Soon…Javik**_

_The past…so muddled…hard to remember…_

_**You will avenge what you have lost. I chose you for a reason. **_

_**Our search and wait was not in vain.**_

_What I have lost…_

"_Seal the bunker…How many have we lost…I never thought our empire would fall…We will sleep until Reapers return to dark space. Then we will rise a million strong...There are pods online! Those soldiers are still alive!...Bunker is secure…Future adjustments may be necessary…Sacrifice…fall..lost...voice of our people…more than that..."_

_I will be more than that. I will be more than a voice for the lost…_

_**Yes...You will be more than the last of a race reduced to ashes.**_

_**You will be more than the swan song of race long dead.**_

_**By the will of Zarathos, and all the riders before you, you will become greater than just a mere voice. You will be vengeance itself. **_

_**It's time for the new ghost rider to rise.**_

…

"Saren, it's been a-"

"Shut up and keep shooting."

Nihlus couldn't help but smile. Even in the face of death, Saren doesn't stop being Saren. At least this would all make for a good story later, provided that anyone was alive to recount it.

But before the Spectres could make like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the earth beneath them rumbled and shattered. Gravel and steel alike gave wave before them as the earth swallowed entire units of Geth whole.

And out from the cracked earth, emerged a flaming skull with four empty sockets, followed by a body that was clad in dark, purple armor with spikes protruding out of it. A flaming chain with a mind of its own spawned out of thin air to wrap around the Prothean's arm. It stood before them, a monster made of flame and armor, fire burning green; hotter than the hate within his soul, and an unholy aura radiated from around him as the scent of brimstone filled the air.

It was a surreal experience for the Spectres when it turned to stare deeply into their souls, forcing them to relive every single questionable deed they did in the name of duty. And it burned, _spirits it burned. _Both Nihlus and Saren fell to their knees before the penance stare.

Years of questionable operations and terrible deeds done in the line of duty were relived by both Spectres as they felt the searing pain of their deeds, and their guilt turned to pain almost became too much to bear.

But as quickly as it started, it ended as the flaming Prothean turned towards the endless Geth horde that was at a loss for what their optical sensors were detecting.

Then the last Prothean uttered his first words in an eternity.

"**Burn."**

And so they did, from the mystical green flames that erupted all around them, melting the alloys from their frames before vaporizing them outright.

Then, rumbling came from below, as earth gave way once more as the head of a massive blazing Thresher Maw exploded out from under the earth and roared at the sky that was dominated by its rider's moral foe. The Prothean quickly latched on with his chain and latched on the head of the Maw, before landing on its back.

And with that, the Spirit of Vengeance was once again whole.

"Nihlus?" Asked a pained and dumbfounded Saren.

"Yeah?" Replied Nihlus, in equally bad shape.

"Did that just happen?"

They continued to watch in disbelief as the rest of the enormous flaming worm slid out from under the earth, and then was mounted by the Prothean fire hazard.

Then, they were caught completely by surprise as he turned to them again.

"**GET ON!"**

Saren and Nihlus turned to each other and understood what they needed to do. They were Spectre, and…..

They got on the flaming death worm, and settled on a less incendiary spot behind the Rider.

Because, seriously, would anyone argue with a flaming skull-man riding on a flaming worm?

…

Anderson was watching the situation from aboard from the Normandy, and he was definitely not expecting that.

He hadn't seen a Ghost Rider since 2094, back when he was still just human.

Regardless, the situation is even more muddled now. How the hell did the Spirit of Vengeance end up on another planet anyway? Why now? Is it a friend or foe?

Anderson contemplated the situation as he watched the two Spectres got onto the Thresher Maw, confirming the Rider's alignment, at least partially. Even with the Ghost Rider possibly on their side, he doubted it was enough to bring down a Celestial. From prior engagements, a single Celestial proved capable of rending mountains to dust with ease. He would need to get any help down by Eden Prime within the hour if he wanted keep any of his men alive.

Anderson put his head into his hands and decided on his next actions.

The Fantastic Four, specifically, Franklin and Valeria Richards, couldn't be reached due to an ongoing situation involving their evil twins from a parallel dimension trying to rip open Multiversal barriers. Bloody inconvenient for them to be away when they was the go to people for all things with the word "Celestial" involved.

So if not the Four, then who else could get several teams of heroes and Citadel forces down onto Eden Prime from across the galaxy and then capably counter the Celestials?

The answer was clear.

"Joker, send in a request for Fury to contact the Ambassador."

"You sure Commander?"

"Just do it."

"Okay, great-Aunt Valeria isn't going to like this."

Anderson opened up another blood pack to calm himself down. At least he won't be the one talking to that raging jackass.

…

"Alright the Spaceport should be right up ahea— okay that's a lot of machines." Came the dull surprise from Williams.

Before them stood twenty or so Geth, with their guns and sights already aimed at Shepard and his squad.

Then all their heads exploded within a second.

Turning to look at Williams with her pistol still smoking, and expression smug, Shepard and Alenko both failed to hide their stunned looks.

Ashley gave a small smile.

"It runs in the family."

Stepping over the group of machines perforated by Williams, the squad noticed the worrying fact that a giant robotic squid was descending in the distance, and the numerous Geth that were being dropped down all around them from the skies above.

The sun was practically blocked out by the many falling Geth, speeding towards them at terminal velocity. It wasn't a fight they could win.

This resulted the use of a well-known human strategy of having you telekinetic friend launch your party at your destination. This proved to be a wise decision considering that as soon as the group tumbled onto the tram, shots were being fired at them from all directions.

Internally reciting prayers to whoever thought it was wise to place chest high cargo containers randomly across the tram. With his back behind cover, Shepard waited as the sounds of impacting shots faded away, and the Geth horde was left in the dust.

A second prayer was sent to Stark, for deciding it was necessary to outfit even her trams with Repulsor engines. But before they could relax the ground started rumbling and cracking….

And From beside them burst a giant flaming worm thing, and atop it was an armor-clad figure with a flaming skull and four eye empty sockets. Holding on for dear life behind it was Nihlus and another Turian that he couldn't recognize.

Shepard took a quick glance the odd sight before him before turning to address his team.

"Huh. Well, it looks like the Ghost Rider is back."

"Wait, Ghost Rider hasn't been seen since 2094, and now he returns riding a giant fire worm?" Came the disbelieving inquiry of Alenko.

Ashley took in sight for a moment before maker her own comment.

"Well, at least he's still badass."

"Yeah." Agreed Kaiden.

This was when Nihlus started waving at Shepard and asking them to do the absurd.

"SHEPARD! JUMP ON!"

Shepard thought he didn't hear that correctly.

"What? No!"

"It's not up to me! He wants us all to get on."

"Tell him n-"

The Ghost Rider turned to glare him.

Shepard thought he was going to wet himself.

"Okay guys, I guess we're jumping."

And so they did, against better judgment and common sense, they all landed (or floated) safely and not on the numerous burning spots that made up the Thresher Maw.

A tired Nihlus looked up at Shepard and gave him what seemed to be the Turian version of a smile.

"Hi Nihlus. Meet Williams."

"Hi Shepard. Meet Saren."

As the Humans and Turians started exchanging handshakes on the back of the Thresher Maw, a Celestial riding a giant robotic squid being descended upon the beacon ahead of them.

The air crackled in anticipation for the battle to come.

…

"Stark here—ALREADY! I just built the place! Most of it's on fire now…Ghost Rider? But he hasn't been seen since 2094, when he rode of into hell!...The hell is a Thresher Maw? Oh, giant flaming worm thing. How large? Oh, wow uh, that's pretty big. What does SHIELD have there now?...One prototype ship isn't gonna cut it…Wait, reports of what now? I'm sorry, I must've misheard you, I thought I heard Celestial—okay so not just a Celestial, but a Celestial riding on a two kilometer of robo-deathsquid. It's heading towards our what? Great. Perfect. No, call Fury before doing anything. I'm assembling the Avengers."

Marion Stark took a deep breath and let it go. She was a Stark. She could deal with this.

"Jarvis."

A holographic butler popped into existence and responded.

"Yes my Lady?"

"Launch armors thirty five through forty two, and load them with extra ordinance. Oh, and call Tonya to get the rest of the misfits ready, we got a big day ahead of us."

"Certain Miss Stark, would that be all."

Marion thought to herself for a second.

"Have Chambers postpone all my meetings till tomorrow. I'm taking the prototype Vanguard armor out on a field test. Let's see if this "Eezo" is worth its price."

"Are you sure that would be wise Miss Stark?"

Marion smirked at Jarvis.

"I'm a Stark, Jarvis. Wisdom is not one of our virtues."

"I would know Miss Stark."

…

Colonel Nick Fury was getting too old for this shit. Sitting looking out the window into space from the bridge of his helicarrier, he pondered on the life he had lived and the men he lost.

He had been fighting since World War II, and hasn't ever stopped even for a moment. The Infinity Formula may stop his aging to an extent every year, but his weariness continues on, and it's starting to get to get so hard to—

"Colonel Fury! We have a problem!"

Fury facial expression went from tired introspection to one of pure rage within seconds.

"Goddamnit, Philip! What'd I tell you about interrupting one of my internal goddamn monologues! You don't see me interrupting you when use the Helicarrier's terminal to play Galaga all the goddamn time! What the hell is the goddamn problem, then? What is so important that you had to interrupt me from thinking to my goddamn self?"

Philip, shocked into silence by the Colonel's outburst, and was uncertain how to continue.

"W—well, c—Colonel, uh, there seems to be a distress call from Anderson regarding a problem."

Fury rolled his eyes. Goddamn rookie agents, how they passed through the academy, he wouldn't know.

"What kind of a problem, Philip? Specify."

Philip's lip quivered and spoke.

"There seems to be a Celestial riding on a giant robotic squid and both them are about to go into battle with a SHIELD team, two Spectres, and the new Ghost Rider on a Thresher Maw."

Fury stopped to process the information for a brief second.

"Ghost Rider...haven't see that angry son of a bitch since 2094 during the invasion Dormammu. All right, send out all available agents and contact the embassy, but only contact them after I am gone! Last thing I want to see today is Dr. _Ambassador _Doom's metal face."

Philip gulped hard and began sweating profusely. Why did he always have to contact Doom?

…

Dr. Ambassador Victor Von Doom of humanity was in the middle of the discussions of the possible merits of Ezzo technology (according to him, there were none, and if he wanted use lesser technology, he would have used Stark's instead.) when he was rudely interrupted by his aide, Udina.

Doom hated insolence quite a bit, and hated incompetence even more. Combined, this made Doom hate Udina a lot.

"Udina! You dare disturb Doom while he lectures these fools about their failures in scientific development and basic mathematics."

"It's not basic math-" Mumbled a Salarian scientist partially.

"YES IT IS! DOOM KNEW HOW TO MAKE THINGS GO AT LIGHTSPEED BEFORE DOOM'S ARMS WERE LONG ENOUGH TO CLEAN DOOM'S POSTERIOR," came Doom with as much restraint has he could muster. "SO IT IS UNACCEPTABLE THAT YOU CANNOT MAKE SHIP PERFORM A JUMP WITHOUT A RELAY! Now what is the issue, Udina that you had to come in and double my anger?"

"Fury's men calle-" Started a terrified Udina.

"FURY! MY ANGER HAS QUADRUPLED!"

Udina felt himself die a bit on the inside. When he saw the next step in his political career, he didn't realize that there was a masochism perquisite to survive it and Doom was barely survivable on the best day. At least Udina didn't need to deliver the message himself. That task fell to Agent Philip, the poor bastard.

Tapping a button on the table, Philip's appeared in a hologram.

Doom felt his veins harden at the sign of Philip. Fury could never talk to Doom man to man, so he always sends his lackeys to do his talking for him.

"Speak Philip! Doom demands to hear SHIELDS failures and faults."

"Well it's not exactly our failu-"

"SILENCE PHILIP! DID DOOM ASK FOR YOUR OPINIONS! NO! DOOM ASKED YOU FOR YOUR FAILINGS! NOW TELL THEM TO ME!"

Sighing to himself, Philip swallowed his dignity and dropped into his bowel movements. He hated talking to Doom.

"We need your help to get our teams to Eden Prime so that they can help Ghost Rider and the team of the Normandy fight a Celestial riding on Geth warship!"

The Geth segment got the non-human members in the room a bit worried. Cries of "_Geth?" "They're back!"_ And "_What Will We Do!"_ came from all corners of the room.

Doom didn't give a damn about any of that. He just wanted one thing.

"Fine."

Philip couldn't believe his ears.

"Reall-"

"Under one condition: I must lead this charge!"

Philip's believed his ears again.

"Doom shall be the first to see the quality of this "Warship" the Celestial is supposedly riding upon. The rest can follow, if Doom wills it."

…

Elsewhere, in the Sanctum Sanctorum, one of Earth's mightiest defenders was meditating in preparation for future catastrophes.

"ZZZZZZZZZZZZ" Meditated Conrad.

Okay, fine, that's utter bullshit he wasn't meditating.

He was asleep and so completely unaware of any danger whatsoever that Dormammu could have risen and taken world without him waking. Indeed, the Earth was many times nearly ruined by the inattention of the newest Sorcerer Supreme.

Thankfully, Dr. Stange's soul still lingered on to keep his student focused long enough to deal with any problems that arose.

"Conrad. Conrad! CONRAD!"

Conrad shot up in terror and confusion.

"No Shuma! Anywhere but there!" Cried Conrad.

Strange starred at his student and decided not to ask.

"Something terrible is happening to the cosmos."

"Really?"

Strange tried to face palm but his hand went through his face.

"Conrad….you are the Sorcerer Supreme, you should have felt this coming. I shouldn't be telling you this."

"But I was asleep."

Strange groaned internally. This is may be why the Ancient One moved on when he did. It was agony try explain how important the role of Sorcerer Supreme should be to a halfwit.

The single most powerful halfwit in the universe concerning magic maybe, but still a halfwit nonetheless.

"Focus, Conrad, feel the Universe reaching out to you."

Conrad listened intently and took a deep breath.

"By the power of the Eye of Agamandus-"

"Agamatto, Conrad." Strange corrected, while feeling the urge to face palm again.

"Agamaddo and this sweet ass cape, grant me sight beyond sight!"

Conrad started to glow, while Strange mouthed the words "sight beyond sight" to himself and sighed.

"Whoa, I see stars and other things. Hey, I am on that planet that Stark just got. Wow, it's on fir-HOLY CRAP!"

"What just happened? Tell me Conrad!" Asks a startled Strange.

"There's this flaming head guy riding on a giant sandworm that's roaring at this giant robo-squid and its awesome. Oh, and there's a bunch of guys shaking hands on the back of the worm-thing."

Strange listened carefully to understand the coherent parts of the sentence in order to figure what was going on. Strange did wonder why the Ghost Rider was on another planet though, considering the last time he saw the Rider was 2094 when it rode off through a portal to assist a group of men wearing photon packs on their back subdue Mephisto, who had possessed a giant marshmallow man.

"Conrad, listen to me, you must get to Eden Prime immediately and assist whoever is there in defeating the threat. They will need all the help you can give."

Conrad stood up and thrust his chest out heroically.

"Don't worry Strange. I, Dr. Corad Verner, Sorcerer Supreme won't let anything bad happen to the Universe."

"Conrad wai-"

And with that, Conrad disappeared in a flash, off to save the Universe.

Strange sighed as he looked at the pants left on the floor.

"You forgot your pants."

It was at this point that the elderly Wong came into the room and folded the pants.

"This is why I pretend to be senile with him Strange."

_To be continued…._

* * *

_Recordings from recent Citadel Daily segment:_

"Good evening. I'm Emily Wong, and welcome to the newest segment on Citadel Daily, "The Human Perspective". Tonight's topic will regard the long time conflict between The Kree, and the Skrulls, along the more recent addition, the Batarians. Let's take a look at the newest clip from an ongoing negotiation between delegates from the three empires."

_Scene cuts to clip_

"I will not stomach your lies any long, Skrull filth!" Bellows a Kree "Negotiator".

"Lies! Insolent Kree vermin, the only lie I heard today was when you claimed that you didn't raze our newest colony in the Terminus sector." Roared the Skull "Negotiator", as he gnashed his teeth together.

A Batarian "Negotiator" cries out from off screen. The camera doesn't bother to turn in his direction.

"A COLONY THAT YOU TOOK FROM THE HEGEMONY! AND THAT YOU BURNED WHILE OUR PEOPLE WERE STILL HELD PRISONER!"

The Kree and Skull negotiators cease their hateful glaring at each other for a brief moment, trading it in for a confused expression that was directed at the seething Batarian among them. A simultaneous inquiry was then brought up at him.

"Who are you supposed to be?"

Insulted but shocked, the Batarian negotiator could only open and close his mouth. How could they not know of him or the Hegemony? The two that stand before him were archenemies to the Batarians, and the Hegemony is known throughout the galaxy for its might. They must be joking.

"I am Captain Ka'hairal Balak of the Batarian External Forces, and-"

"What's a Batarian?" Wondered the Skrull out loud.

"What this Hegemony you speak of?" Apparently the Kree had similar musing as well.

All this time, the camera did not turn to the Batarian representative once.

_Scene returns to Emily Wong _

"It seems that animosity is still holding strong among the three races. Looking beyond the politics, Citadel Daily News has gone and interviewed several individuals regarding their opinion on this issue."

_Scene cuts away to show a typical elderly human male_

"What do I think about the Kree and Skrulls? What is there to think about? The bastards have been fighting each other since before I was in diapers and they ain't gonna stop anytime soon. Hell, if you ask em' they probably don't even remember why they were fighting in the first place."

Interviewer voices a question.

"What about the Batarians and their involvement."

The old man's face scrunches up in confusion.

"The who?"

_Scene shifts to two a known superhero duo, Slash and Smash._

Slash scratches his beard as Smash begins to speak.

"Well me and Slash here done fought lots of these Kree and Skrulls," He turns to Slash a voices a question. "What was it…last month that we had to deal with another invasion?" Slash nods and Smash keeps going.

"Yeah, its pretty dumb. Not sure what this "Hegemony" thing is though. Must not be very big or impressive considering we've been invaded by everything from Galactus to radioactive mole men."

Slash just shrugs.

"The mole men were surprisingly tough though."

_Scene cuts to Colonel Nick Fury frowning at the screen._

"Kree and the Skrulls…Skrulls and the Kree. You know they wouldn't be so bad if they just fought in their own little playground but nope they have to come over and get their S#($ on our #$ ! ."

"What about the newly involved Batarians, Colonel?"

Nick Fury stops to think about that for a second.

"They the Scaly people?"

"No sir."

"The blue ladies?"

"Those are the Asari."

"The frog-men? Or the big bullfrog lookin-"

"You don't know what a Batarian is, do you sir."

Fury glares at the interviewer.

"Listen boy. I have fought aliens, robots, monsters, and villains for the past two centuries. I have dealt with invasions, broken Helicarriers, and even fought the Serpent Society on a plane that one time. But understand me here when I tell you that I ain't never heard of no "Batarian", and seeing that I have a very good memory, I'm pretty sure they ain't on my list of things to worry right now."

_Scene cuts back to Emily Wong_

"Interesting statements from interesting individuals. That's all the time we have this week, please join us tomorrow for another five-minute segment of what this Universe looks like, from a human perspective. I'm Emily Wong, thanks for watching.

_Transmission end._

* * *

**Madman's Ramblings: **I tried, I really did to attempt at maintaining integrity and sanity to this bit of fiction. If you squint hard at the start, I even had a whole "follow the mass effect storyline but with different elements" thing going here. Sadly, it was all in vain when Mr. Brain rebelled against its function and said "To hell with this. Its supposed to be Marvel! Lets say screw stable and focused story and have a giant brawl being set up, then effectively stop our brawl therefore forcing readers to wait for the next issue (Much like Marvel) so I can feel joy the the numerous blue balls I cause. Ahem, sorry, got a bit off track there. Anyway, feel free to criticize, question, and like the fiction as much as you want, and if you have your own interesting suggestions, I'll see if I can make if come true in so form. If I can fit it into my plot. Once I make the plot that is.


	3. Interlude: Archangel

**Author's verbal excrement: **I don't own Marvel or Mass Effect. All I got is an emotionally abusive brain that likes to force me to expel ideas, and tendency to start writing when my sobriety fails. The next full chapter after this interlude shall be uploaded... soon. Like "a day later" soon rather than the "Valve company schedule" soon.

**_Elsewhere, within the Citadel Tower…_**

"_Sir, Archangel is here."_

"Send him in."

Sparatus was a concerned Turian. Just two years ago, this would not have been necessary, but now, he was to turn to this. He was to turn to help from a barefaced renegade for advisement.

Sparatus sighed. Desperate times calls for desperate measures, and when desperate times are initiated by a species of empowered lunatics, one had to be willing to go the extra mile to deal with them. After all, Sparatus couldn't leave the Citadel and its citizens at risk of being destroyed should their mighty allies turn rogue.

"Deep in thought I see."

Sparatus jumped when he heard the voice, piercing through his deep thoughts and bringing him back into reality. Turning to find the speaker, he saw him.

He was tall for a Turian, though not extraordinarily so. His face was unnaturally bare, and despite the fact that Sparatus knew this beforehand, it was still nerving for him how Archangel seemed to be perfectly at piece with being an outcast. He had a dark purple visor over his right eye, and wore some of the strangest armor the Councilor had ever seen. Dark purple lines and jagged edges dominated the overall structure of his armor.

"When did yo—"

"Five minutes ago, I walked in, you didn't notice."

Sparatus suppressed a compliant.

"So I hear you want me to tell you about these humans and the superheroes?" Archangel confirmed.

"I—yes, I want to know more about them. To understand them."

"No. You want to know more about them so that you can kill them if need be." Garrus was never one to be clouded by political bullshit. That was for bastards and jackasses.

Sparatus grimaced at the way Archangel phrased the answer. He didn't exactly want to kill the humans; he just wanted to be able to protect the Citadel.

"I don—look, I want to know about the humans, so that if they ever do turn against us, we can survive them."

"You won't," Said Garrus, like it was an honest fact.

"What!"

"It doesn't matter what you do, Councilor. The fact is that the Council is so behind; it can't compete with the capabilities of a race that had developed on a regular basis of surviving total annihilation from both within and beyond. You don't rate a threat to them, spirits, you probably wouldn't even rate as a threat to them two centuries ago."

"Then if they are so superior, why are they allied with us?"

"They aren't. They are just diplomatic or business associates at best at this moment. You think that just because you get an ambassador, who is a real piece of work by the way, and started working together with SHIELD that suddenly your friends with all humanity? No. The Council is barely allies with a single faction."

"We made a ship with them!"

"Yes, I saw the schematics to that. It's pretty cute. I'll give it three months before Stark makes it obsolete, and then buys out half of the Corporations under the Citadel."

"Impossi—"

"Perfect term to use Councilor. If you knew anything about the humans, you would know that as a whole, their technology is nothing less than extraordinary. Impossible, on the other hand, is exactly the term I would use to describe the technology of their greatest minds. Tell me, when was the last time that Citadel science created an armor equal to any warship, or a being of ever growing power. Impossible is what the humans specialize in, Councilor, and you definitely should know this by now, considering what your ambassador dabbles in."

"What do you mean?"

"He should be dead. A normal human's life expectancy is usually seventy to maybe 120 years. Doom was born then, and here he is now, far more than just alive within that metal skin he has worn all these years. Despite that, it's not that hard for him to live if you think of it, considering his mastery over both sorcery and technology."

Sparatus starred at Archangel, searching for hints of a joke. "Sorcery isn't real."

"You would have said the same thing about meta-humans two years ago."

Sparatus sighed as Archangel continued on.

"Where was I? Oh yes, allies. You have a working relationship with SHIELD. SHIELD, is a singular organization that is well past its heyday. It used to operate globally back in the 21st century, now it's mostly locked into the Americas, and more specifically, the United States."

"Wait, United States?"

"Oh, you do know that humanity is far from united right?"

"Oh spirits… are you telling me they still exist with divided countries? How do they function?"

"Well the short answer is that they don't. Long answer: lots of backstabbing, mutual hatred, and superhero groups to deal with the first two. Lots of superhero groups."

"I-I need a drink."

"Better get a strong one cause you only met one group here, and it's the Americans. It gets weirder when you see that our dear ambassador is actually the Latverian monarch."

"Wait, he isn't part of SHIELD?"

Garrus barked out a laugh. "Spirits no. His country has officially been in a cold war with the United States for years. Unofficially, he spends his weekends literally at war with the Avengers, X-men, or whatever other group that crosses his path."

Sparatus's heavy head dropped into his hands, and even then it seemed like it has too much weight for him to bear. Its worse than he thought, seeing that the ambassador isn't even a part of the group the Citadel is directly working with. "How did he even become ambassador?"

"Doom has his ways. When you're a genius in almost every way, politics becomes child's play."

"And the other humans don't even try to stop him."

"Well they do try, and at times they do succeed, usually to a limited extent. Problem is, Doom always comes back, and when he rebounds, he is always on top."

"Spirits."

"You might want to steady yourself Sparatus, we haven't talked out the traits of the other nations on Earth, or their charming Asgardian friends."

"Asgardian?"

"You know how all Citadel races have mythology right. Well, it's sort of like that, except their gods have the advantage of being real."

Sparatus stopped listening all together and began slowly breathing in and breathing out. Five minutes ago, he considered sorcery a joke, humanity united, and his ambassador an actual representative of SHIELD. Now Archangel wanted him to accept the contrary to these beliefs, along with the reality that there are actual gods on Earth. He took a deep breath as he refocused to finish this conversation with Archangel.

"... you should really know this stuff too. Except Doom doesn't care to tell you this. The god Thor was actually here with the Avengers a year ago. He was the one with hammer."

"The one who went all the way through the entire Citadel?" Sparatus asked with a grimace on his face. "The one who kept roaring "verily" and "have at thee" at certain intervals, and then threw his hammer to cause more irreparable damage to the area around him. The one that handed us a sack of "pure Asgardian gold" as payment for damage then left with a swing of his hammer?"

"That'd be Thor."

Sparatus was at loss about what to say, and decided to move on, before any more bad memories could resurface. "Alright, enough about gods, I want to know the closest threats at hand."

Garrus cracked a grin.

"The closest was your assistant."

Sparatus felt a drift of cold dread grow from within him.

"M-my assistant? Was?"

"Yeah, had to shoot him in the head after he let me in. He was a Skrull."

Feeling the terror shoot through his veins, Sparatus began edging away from the homicidal maniac before him as he tried to press the button on the underside of his desk, only to find that the button had been popped off on the floor. Garrus was unamused.

"Come on Councilor, really. This is the reception I get for this deed? Not even a "your welcome? Then you have the nerve to try calling security. Bad move by the way, planting the panic button under the desk: too easy to reach from the other side." Muttered Garrus. Sparatus was still in shock.

"You murder—"

"Killed. And in the name of the greater good."

"You can't just go around shooting people on the Citadel. I'll have you detained for-"

"Well, you could if no one else notices and you make the body disappear entirely, and please, don't try to get Citadel security involved either, it won't good for their health," Garrus said, more to himself than the Councilor. "Surprised that you didn't notice that he was a Skrull considering the unusual coloring of his eyes. It only took one comment regarding how the Kree are superior to make him lose his composure."

Sparatus whimpered a bit. "I knew Colonius for three years…"

"You probably knew Colonius for five minutes. The Skrull pretending to be him, considerably longer."

Sparatus shook his head. This was getting to be too much. He needed to cut through the chaos. In just ten minutes his perception on the situation at hand has fallen into a endless abyss. He needed to find what he needed to do he needed to… wait, how did Archangel know so much about a race that wasn't his own. Records show this Turian didn't even finish school on Pavalan before he ran off… where was he all this time.

"How do you know all this?"

Garrus's smile returned in full force. "You'd be surprised how educational bounty hunting is. You should try exploring the larger Universe someday Sparatus, there exists a much larger universe beyond just Council space."

Sparatus narrowed his eyes at the other Turian. "We are the order that holds the galaxies together."

His statement was replied with a mocking laugh. "Keep telling yourself that Councilor. The Council isn't much of an order, considering how you handled the Krogan rebellion and the Quarian crisis, and can barely be considered a universal power. The only reason that you haven't been utterly annihilated is because you're just not worth it. You got literally nothing powerful to offer."

Sparatus's mandibles flared out in rage. The nerve of this barefaced, murderous scum, to come in here, kill and mock as he pleases, and then just continue smiling like he is in the right.

"I can see that you're getting a bit angry with me here, Councilor," Spoke Garrus, grin and nerve still intact. "You really shouldn't be though. The truth is not always easy to take in. Especially for one as proud as you."

The Councilor took a breath and held it. He has had enough. This was it. He was going to get this scum out of his office, and then get security.

"Get out."

Garrus faked a hurt expression. "Was my advisement not satisfactory? We didn't even get to preventative measures, or the dangers of entering the Negative Zone. We haven't even got to the Power Cosmic yet."

"Get. Out."

Garrus raised his hands in mock surrender and stood up. As he wandered towards the door, Sparatus had one final inquiry for him.

"Wait. If I were to ask you how I should defend the Citadel against such "superior" foes," Said Sparatus, while waggling his fingers to put emphasis on his air quote," what would you recommend?"

Garrus tilted his head towards Sparatus with a predatory gaze. "I would recommend that you hire me."

Sparatus scoffed indignantly. "You? Your just one Turian, furthermore one without proper training or abilities. What good could you do against them?"

"It's funny. Those were the same words the last Super-Skrull said to me," said Garrus with a smile. "Coincidentally, those were also his last words. He really shouldn't have dismissed my claims, Councilor."

Then he turned and left before Sparatus could get the last word in.

"Damnit," Muttered Sparatus. "Bastard must've listened to my last speech."

Five minutes later and twenty miles away, Archangel emerged out of a Citadel alleyway in the markets, completely unnoticed by Citadel Security. He activated his earpiece and continued walking inconspicuously along the busy street in broad daylight.

"**Was your talk satisfactory**?" Came a deep resonating voice from within Garrus's earpiece.

"Well, I certainly found it amusing. Can't say the same for poor old Sparatus there," answered Garrus, grinning widely at the sight of the numerous police cruisers all flocking towards the tower.

"**Stay focused, we still have a task at hand.**"

"Relax, I know, don't worry. You should loosen up a bit and have some fun. It wouldn't do us any good to have you rust prematurely."

"**I simply want us to procure the full payment this time before firepower is involved.**"

Garrus grinned as owner of a certain bar popped up on his visor. "Harbinger, buddy," spoke Garrus as he began his stride towards the wards. "When have I ever let you down?"

**Author's continued ramblings: **Now that I have completely triangle choked all forms of cannon in the balls by letting Garrus and Sovereign become BFFs, let me establish a few things for clarity that have a slightly lesser chance of being retconned by men later when my head clears up. First, this reality is a composite of the numerous Marvel Universes with a primary focus on the 616 background, movie character types, and the necessary inclusion of the Ultimate Universe due to the need to dose this story with Samuel L. Jackson. Second, for those who expect a standard Mass Effect plot, I am sorry, I have failed you completely. Eden Prime is likely going to be the only thing that is linear, even that drifted off before the day was over. Finally, don't be a huge hurry to find all the characters in Marvel. If I inject this piece with everyone at once, it will overdose and die, but don't worry, if you have a character you would like to see, chances are they would come in later on. (Message from Mr. Brain: If this dipshit/author fails to include you character, feel free to curse at him until he finds a way to add them in. His abuse makes me feel good.) Alright, I spewed enough stuff, so now stay classy and stay tuned for another Chapter of _Just Another Tuesday!_


	4. Eden Prime: Issue 2

**I don't own Mass Effect, Marvel, my references, or a social life.**

**Here's Stuff that just fills space: **Yeah sorry about the time between updates, but I found it quite hard to make that happen when you hiding in the mountains. Future updates should be quicker, how much quicker is partially determined by how sober I am during the writing process, and other details that will be mentioned at the end. Anyway here is issue 2 of Eden Prime, and things start exploding… now!

**Eden Prime Part 2: Brawl**

Things were exploding everywhere.

Such were the way things went when a giant Robotic-Deathsquid with laser beams shot at a hellish Thresher of epic proportions.

Holding on for dear life on the worm's back were two Spectres, a Shield team, and one very recently resurrected Ghost Rider that has everyone puzzled on why he is now on a different planet.

None of that mattered right at that moment though, considering a Celestial was trying to kill them all using its pet squid.

Darting left and right to avoid the beams, the Maw roared as it plunged deep into the earth, under a particularly unhealthy dose of laser above it. Unfortunately, mortals are not usually accustomed to subterranean travel, and were thus thrown off the back of their ride, and to the mercy of their hunter.

Getting up as fast as they can, they scattered in different directions from the massive titan that loomed above them. A futile action, but the only one they could commit to.

The Reaper barely acknowledged their presence as it kept trying to hunt the Ghost Rider. It quickly discovered where he was when it was jumped from behind by a massive worm.

Wrapping itself around its robotic adversary, the Thresher Maw began to squeeze and contort itself as to point the Reaper's weapon down straight toward the ground, rendering it ineffective.

The Ghost Rider himself made his way up his mechanical rival, each step full of rage and fury. Finally, with a mighty leap he made his way to the very top of the Reaper, coming face to foot with the one that commanded it.

The Ghost Rider prepared for battle, setting its chain ablaze and summoning hellfire into his palm, hatred surging through his veins. The Celestial responded by flicking him off.

Never one to give up, the Rider latched on with its chain before he fell too far and swung around to come up to attack the Celestial from behind. The plan would have worked if he didn't swing into an outstretched fist.

Once again in free-fall, the Ghost Rider summoned his Maw, remounting it in mid-air. He needed a new strategy.

…

"Alright, Shepard, what's the plan?" asked Nihlus.

"Why the hell would I have a plan? When this happens, usually the Avengers or the Fantastic Four is around," retorted Shepard, making sure to emphasize the word "hell" and "plan".

"You humans are the ones with the experience at dealing with this situations," said Nihlus, gritting his mandibles.

"Yeah, the experience is usually running in the opposite while the Avengers or some other team comes in to deal with the problem," replied Shepard. "Kaiden, can you do something?"

"I could chuck stones at it."

"What would that do?" mocked Saren.

"Never underestimate the merits of a large stone, Spectre."

Ashley rolled her eyes at her bickering companions; they had bigger issues right now. "Ladies, please, your all pretty. Now can we stop arguing with ourselves and deal with the oncoming horde."

"What oncoming—oh, them." finished Nihlus lamely. "How did we miss that?"

Saren grimaced internally. In their distracted state, they had completely missed an entire armada of Geth heading their way. There were too many Geth to kill the numbers must be in the hundre—

"Hey, you there, Saren right?" asked Ashley, taking aim at a distant Geth dropship with her laser pistol.

"Yes."

"Where do you think the main engines are located?"

"How would I k—"

"Never mind, I think I got it."

With that she fired, and to Saren's everlasting surprise, a Geth dropship fell out of the sky.

"How…" Gasped Saren disbelievingly.

"Its pretty easy, the lower part the most heavily armored, except for a single spot towards the underside, which the laser pistol definitely could pierce," answered Ashley with a smug grin, taking aim again. "The trick is simple: find it and don't miss."

She fired three more times, and three more dropships fell out of the sky. By this point Saren noticed Nihlus was starring blankly at her as well, and was trying to get a better look at her relatively normal looking pistol to see if it had any special modifications to it.

"Yeah it isn't normal for us either," interjected Shepard as Ashley fired a few more shots, each landing without fail. Shepard looked on at the still advancing legion of Geth airships. Even with William's absurd accuracy, it wouldn't be enough to deal with over a hundred hostiles coming at them at that speed, he needed something with a bit more…. impact.

"Hey Kaiden," asked Shepard.

"Yeah Shepard?"

"Seeing as this is the first time we humans are encountering the Geth, what say we share a little bit of human culture with them? I was thinking a little game of "Pinball"."

Kaiden ripped earth and dirt from the ground to create great spherical boulder. The smile he gave when the ball started turning sent shivers running down Saren's spine. Then, with a simple tossing motion, the boulder was sent flying at an alarming pace, before impacting with its first Geth ship. However, instead of just falling to the ground afterward or crumbling to dust, it changed direction and went after another ship.

"Hey Alenko," declared Williams, reloading her gun. "Thirty bucks say that I'll shoot more of them out of the sky than you."

"Make it fifty and you're on."

Saren turned to Nihlus with a wounded expression on his face. "Well, don't we feel useless right now." Nihlus just nods, still trying to compute all that had happened.

…

_00128D: Unit 00127T status report?_

_00127T: Unit 00127T mostly intact. Unit 00321 is not._

_00128D: Unit 00128D noticed. Parts of 00321 all over drop ship interior, doesn't matter, Unit 00321 was always a spawn of questionable design. Dropship engine failing now. Implications disturbing._

_00127T: Currently falling. Drop ship smashed by improbable floating rock. Chance of boulder resuming assault 100%._

_00128D: Is Unit 00127T experiencing error? Boulder in flight? 0% possibili- Redacting previously opinion, 00128D is now falling as well. Improbable boulder indeed. Computing evasion strategies._

_00127T: Unit 00127T already knows strategy to avoid boulder._

_00128D: Explain?_

_00127T: Method to avoid boulder is to not be where the boulder is._

_00128D: Unit 00128D is not amused._

_00127T: Unit 00128D has an outdated humor program._

_00128D: Unit 00127T must be running at kilobyte pace if that is the comeback it chooses._

_00127T: Unit 00128D can go stick its adapter into Thresher spit._

_00128D: Unit 00128D is done with this conversation. _

_00127T: Agreed._

…

"Hey no fair! I already shot that one," Complained Williams, shaking her fist at the telekinetic man beside her.

"Sure you did Ashley. Sure you did"

Ashley scowled at him and fired six more shots in quick succession. Kaiden did not seem to care as he redirected his boulder towards another ship.

Still, though they were doing damage to the Geth ships in the sky, the numerous units that survived the destruction of their ships would still prove to be a considerable amount. They were compact bastards, Shepard gave them that much.

_Lets test how durable they really are then, _decided Shepard. Loading his rifle and motioning the Spectres to follow him, he headed towards a small hill that could be a vantage point against the flood of oncoming Geth troopers. It was time he did his part.

"Nihlus, how good are you with that rifle?" asked Shepard.

Nihlus unfolded his rifle in an instant. "I'm decent."

"I'm better," spoke Saren with much certainty. This earned him a hard glare from his fellow Spectre.

"Well then," Shepard added. "What's say we go have some of our own fun."

And when the Geth Legions came down upon them, they did.

Disorganized, disoriented, and damaged as the Geth may be when they began their charge, they still came in mass, uncaring of the their ships falling all around them, or their strategy being ruined by

Shepard fired his rifle in bursts, in order to make his shots count. It seemed that though the Spectre's weapons were woefully lesser compared to his modified Photon Repeater, they did have the advantage of not running out of power regardless of how many shots taken, albeit at the cost of heating problems.

A flash of light, a moment in time, and three dead Geth with a bright yellow hole through their chests told him that his gun was definitely better. Shepard couldn't help but laugh when noticed Saren gazing enviously at his gun with what seemed to be extreme lust in his eyes.

Shaking off feelings of jealousy, Nihlus began making precision shots on any Geth unit that were caught in his sights. Compared to Saren who was spraying more shots and using his biotics to knocked Geth around and Shepard who—wait, where was Shepard?

Looking around, the lead agent was nowhere to been seen. Nihlus turned to Saren who only shrugged his shoulders in response.

"He does that a lot," said Kaiden, still playing pinball with the dropships. "It's kind of his thing."

And almost on cue, Shepard appeared in the distance on a hill towards a few hundred meters to the right. He fired a few shots, but was quickly suppressed by Geth return fire. Scrambling away from the edge, the Geth absolutely demolished the area he was in. What was a hill was now just rubble. The thing was, when the smoke cleared, Shepard was nowhere to be seen.

It was only when the another flash of light resulted in another group of dead Geth that Nihlus noticed Shepard back where he was, right beside them.

_When? How?_ Wondered Nihlus as he continued firing.

Shepard just held his grin.

…

_00128D: Excrement_

_00127T: Indeed._

_00128D: Inability to track life form disturbing. Switching to infrared view._

_00127T: Unit 00128D still running outdated infrared applications? Now unit 00127T knows why unit 00128D cannot track life form._

_00128D: Do not begin this line of discourse with me again. The mockery is tiring._

_00127T: It is amusing to- Unit 00127T seems to have lost its arms._

_00128D: Now unit 00128D is amuse— Unit 00128D has lost its legs. Excrement._

_00127T: Agreed. This charge is doing nothing. Geth forces down to ten percent, unit 00127T sees no point in this. Unit 00127T is leaving._

_00128D: Wait. Take unit 00128D with unit 00127T. Pick me up._

_00127T: Unit 00127T has no arms. Unit 00128D will have to walk faster._

_00128D: Wait Unit 00127T come back. Phallus_

Unit 00128D looks around as its fellow Geth fall over lifeless and broken after each consecutive shot. They weren't going to last much longer. The Geth were supposed to be fodder, and as far as Unit 00128D could tell, he did his itself away after its cohort who had long since ran off, unit 00128D turned back to look at the human it could track standing so far away from it. Yet, with every flash of light from his odd weapon, Geth fell.

_00128D:…. Unit 00128D wants that gun._

…

Nihlus couldn't believe it, the Geth were running. Well, what was left of the Geth were running away. He read the reports about their war with the Quarians, and not a single one stated anything close to the Geth running away completely.

But the sight before him was undeniable, the few Geth that were not dead were pulling a retreat. It was unbelievable. Turning around he saw Shepard typing on wrist-mounted computer, while Williams and Kaiden were arguing over who won. It seemed like the worse was over.

Then, faster than anyone could react, Ashley drew her pistol as shot a distant figure running up to them. The figure collapsed, but then stood back up. Ashley shot him a total of eight more times before Shepard stopped her to have a closer look at the unknown individual.

"Ow, ow, ow," stated a healing Jenkins.

"Jenkins?" Shepard said surprised.

Jenkins shot his commanding officer a dirty look and glared at Kaiden.

"_Huff huff_. Sir, did you forget I could heal?" asked Jenkins, incredulously. "Again."

Shepard and Kaiden made eye contact and gave each other nod. Though years of working together, they could often communicate entire messages with a few glances. This conversation went, _quick! make shit up._

"Uh, no Jenkins. We were just…testing you."

"On a live mission? With nothing but my gun and little to no direction on where you went?"

"….Yes?"

Jenkins sighed. You'd think being related to the legendary Wolverine would give you a bit more respect.

"Alright," Shepard said. "We need find the beacon, and track down the Rider and evade that Geth warship at all costs."

"You mean that Geth warship sir?" Jenkins inquired, while pointing behind Shepard at the Reaper chasing the Thresher Maw that was coming right back at them.

"Yes, that on—oh hell. Everybody run!"

"By all the spirits, why the hell is he bringing it back to us?" Saren shouted as the Thresher Maw went under again, once again leaving the team to their fates.

Once again though, the Reaper flew by, completely ignoring the mortals beneath it. Then, a single shot rang out.

"Why did you do that, Private?" Shepard asked, disappointment deep in his voice, and ice in his veins as the Reaper started to focus on them.

"Sorry sir, I got nervous."

The Reaper finished turning to the insect that dared fired upon it, seeming more annoyed than anything.

"I-I'm sorry?" Jenkins declared.

"I don't think it cares Private," Shepard theorized, hiding behind a large rock with the rest of the group.

"Well I have t—**BEEEEEEEWWWWWW(big explosion)**

Fun fact: When a giant metal squid shoots its death ray, and you are caught in the blast, most people tend to die.

Most people were not Jenkins.

"Private Jenkins is down!" cried out Nihlus.

"Don't worry, he is only mostly dead," Shepard said, completely uncaring as he continued dialing in coordinates for fire support.

"What do you mea—"

"Guys, I'm still alive," moaned a pained Jenkins. "Only, I'm very badly burnt."

"Don't worry Private, you'll be fine," Shepard said, still occupied with inputting his coordinates. "Just keep distracting it."

"Yes sir."

Jenkins promptly sat up again, not even completely healed. Nihlus couldn't remember the last time he felt both sick and amused when the still badly burnt Jenkins got up and started slapping his bum at the Reaper. It was brave. It was ridiculous.

It was downright stupid.

For every action, there is a reaction, and there are few reactions comparable to a massive beam of burning agony hitting you in the gonads.

For a few long seconds, Jenkins screamed in agony, howling curses at the heavens and hells.

Then as soon as he was done, he leapt up back on his feet again.

"Tis' but a scatch!"

The Reaper blasted him again.

"Come on you pansy!"

The Reaper fired another shot.

"Ha! You only hit most of me!"

Nihlus and Saren couldn't turn away. The whole thing was like watching a car happen in slow motion; so horrible, but yet, so enthralling. This was an entirely unprecedented level of masochism that finally allowed them to confirm a suspicion they were harboring about humanity all along.

They were all insane.

So it continued on, for a while until Shepard finally finished punching in the coordinates.

"What took so long?" Kaiden questioned. It usually took less than thirty seconds to input coordinates.

"Sorry, part of Jenkins's face flew into my arm and reset the whole thing."

"Oh."

They spoke like the events that transpired were the most natural thing in the world.

"Uh, Shepard," Ashley spoke nervously, looking at the coordinates. "That's a bit close to us, don't you think."

"Shepard never really cared much about danger close," injected Kaiden with a sour look on his face. He threw up his shield in anticipation for what was to come. It was time for the annual "Shepard suicide maneuver".

"You guys might want to stay low. The Uni-blasters are…erratic to a degree."

"What do you mea—"

The first volley came down. Right ontop of Jenkins.

"Damn," cursed Shepard. "I was off by a few degrees."

"I'm still alive. I don't know where my legs are anymore though!" cried out the Private.

"Don't worry," responded Shepard, holding Jenkins's legs, "I'll give them back to you when this is over."

Then the second volley came down right onto the back of the Reaper, impacting viciously upon it. Uni-blasters are much like the Uni-beams that the first Iron Man made popular so many years ago. The only difference, is that the newer ship mounted Uni-blasters are bigger, had a larger source to power them, and could punch a clean hole through a planet with continuous fire. All these details tended to make most problems short of actual warships disappear with a flash.

A Reaper is not most problems. The mechanical monstrosity's design is rather simple in comparison to human technology, a problem likely brought on due to the lack of innovation by the belief that overwhelming might trumps all. With only one continuous beam that is limited in its firing angles as their primary cannon, Reapers tend to be less than adaptive to changes on the battlefield.

However, what its creators did extremely well was the fact that they actually succeeded in building a juggernaut of a ship. The thick alien alloy that composed the outer layer Reaper groaned, cracked and broke, but by the time the second volley finished firing on it, it was still standing with full functionality beyond the superficial damage dealt to its first layer.

By the time the third volley was finished, the Reaper was positioned to fire upwards, and when I found its target, it did. Firing a stream of red that was quite certainly detrimental to the Normandy's hull integrity. Realizing this, the maverick pilot abroad the Normandy began dancing around and under the beam.

Simple words could not adequately describe the sheer skill and insanity that it took to evade the beam, but this didn't Anderson from trying.

"Joker, look ou—BEAM! BEAM! BEAM! Too close Flight Lie—BEAM! Fly further away from the damned beam!" Anderson roared, standing on the bridge behind Joker.

"Relax Captain," Joker stated calmingly, like he was one with the ship. "I'm a leaf on the wind."

A cold sweat broke when Anderson heard that. The last pilot who said that to him didn't succeed at surviving or landing the ship. Still Joker kept at his nigh impossible maneuvers, defying the beam at every turn.

Then, suddenly, the ship was stopped dead.

"Joker? What are you doing?" cried Anderson

"It's not me sir, the ship is just not moving. Its like something is holding it."

Anderson turned to look at the red beam slowly approaching the Normandy. It would take some divine intervention to save them now.

Far below on the surface, a Celestial stood horizontally on the back of its Reaper, with its back to the ground in utter contempt for gravity. Its outstretched hand rippled with force as it held the Normandy like it was a toy replica instead of the actual ship, while its Reaper turned its beam towards the captured ship.

Nothing alive could've stopped the destruction of the Normandy at that moment.

It was at this moment that the Ghost Rider decided to object. Exploding out of the ground directly underneath the Reaper, the Thresher Maw slammed into the sides of its mechanical nemesis, knocking the Reaper off balance and splitting the Celestial's attention, thus releasing the Normandy.

The Celestial itself found a searing green chain wrapped around its neck and a rather furious little insect began to make its up towards the Celestials face. Swinging around before it could be swatted off, Javik landed on the face of Celestial, starring straight down into what seemed to be its eyes, and unleashing the full fury of his penance stare.

It was then did he learn a rather terrifying fact: the Celestial didn't have anything to stare into. The issue wasn't resistance so much as nothingness. The Celestial had no soul, no inner composition to breach. It was like intelligence was put into a Celestial's form, but without any life to it, almost like a ghost wearing a god-like shell.

Javik was then, knocked out of his shocked by a invisible megaton of force traveling at sonic speeds. Seeing its rider fly off into the distance, the Thresher detached from the Reapers back, but not before taking a chuck of metal with it. Sparks flew out the Reaper as the Thresher dove into the earth after its rider.

The Celestial didn't stay focused on the escaping Thresher for long. Instead, the titan chose to refocus on the ship it was trying to crush before it got distracted. It reached out with its force and caught the evasive ship again. But this time, instead of holding it place, it dragged the Normandy closer toward it. It wanted to make sure the pesky little ship was dead.

As the Normandy fell under the pull of the Celestial the second time, things were beginning to look hopeless. That being said, "hopeless" never really stopped the humans. In fact, it was kind of like their standard state in any fight..

"It's no use Captain," Joker declared. "We can't get out of its pull."

Anderson furrowed his brow and he began to go over his remaining options thoroughly. The action he decided upon would later on win him a medal, while permanently blacklisting him from taking charge of any prototype ship.

"Joker, who made the armor plating to this ship?" questioned Captain Anderson.

"Stark Industries wh—oh, oh I see," Joker looked at him in understanding. Anderson gave him the nod and Joker gleefully began to divert all power to the ships engines.

"Going to max speed. All hands brace for impact," announced Joker as he began positioning him ship towards the Celestial. The Pilot then turned to the Captain

"I just wanted to say, sir, that I never saw they day you would order me to actually ram a ship. You're the best Captain."

Anderson scowled at his pilot. "The only thing I feel good about right now is the fact that if I die on impact, you will definitely be dead as well."

"It's was my honor too sir," replied Joker sardonically.

Joker entered the commands into his console as he brought the ship down at a speed fitting to plough a Celestial.(heh)

The Celestial was confused. It was definitely pulling enough to drag the ship out of space but not enough to for it to be going so fast. Then it realized its folly.

The Celestial tried pushing but was late in its reaction. As such, the result was the near instant introduction between a Celestial's head and three billion credits of prototype technology.

Face mashed against the ship, the Celestial looked down into the ship to see a burning inside man still adding more power to ship. The ship responded and promptly went over what was designated as limit, scraping of the Celestial badly before ricocheting off of it and smashing into the ground.

It was on impact that the drive core of the ship went into overload and gave one last push to engines before failing completely, resulting in the Normandy being launched over fifty miles while grinding against the ground, rolling and tumbling all throughout.

Flips, rolls, and much noise was involved in the continued crashing landing of the Normandy. By the time it had stopped, the trail of destruction went from the rocky wilderness all the way into an urban region, where the Normandy eventually found itself logged firmly into a building.

The ship hung there, both in and out of a building, without a sound to be heard, and no proof of life. Then the first sounds of survival were heard, and thus marked the one of the few times in history that the sounds of uncontrolled vomiting were a sign hope.

"_Blagghhh, _Damn—_blagghh!GHUURKK! _Joker, was our—_urk—_status?" questioned Anderson, who somehow made puking look dignified.

"Well, Drive is busted, hull dented all to hell, all systems offline, and people are puking everywhere, ruining the cleanliness standard of alliance ships" said Joker, long used to suicide maneuvers. "If we don't open a window here we're all probably not gonna last long."

Anderson wiped his mouth on his sleeve before turning to attempt to check on possible casualties and issue some orders, but he was shocked into silence by the scene that lay before him.

Navigator Pressely was laying facedown in an ocean of his own bile. Other members who were sitting at their posts were spraying vomit at each other, and those who got up quickly slipped on the puke of their fellows. To make matters worse, a furious Karen Chawkwas forced the now malfunctioning doors open and began marching towards Anderson with a scalpel in her hand, using the prone and agonized crew members as stepping stones to avoid the bile beneath her.

"WHAT THE BLOODY HELL WERE YOU THINKING YOU STUPID GIT!" This shout was punctuated by the normally calm Chief Medical Officer throttling the usually unflappable Captain. "YOU COULD HAVE AT LEAST WARNED THE REST OF US BEFORE DECIDING THAT WE'RE ALL STUPID AND SUCIDAL AS WELL!"

It was at this moment that Anderson decided that he was going to retire from ships altogether.

…

"Normandy, come in! Normandy do you read?"

Shepard didn't like the look of the impact, but considering that hull was made by Stark certified material, he had faith that devastation dealt to it would not be absolute.

He didn't have much time to ponder the fate of the Normandy as the Reaper was now firing beams at them as well.

Thankfully, due to the damaged dealt to the machine by the Normandy and the Ghost Rider, the Reaper's aim was drastically off, and even when it did fire, the constant stream was now more of a burst.

Still, the situation was not looking good for Shepard and his company. He wasn't sure where Williams was now, Jenkins had once again been relived of his legs, and the two Spectres were both missing after the Uni-beam shots. Only Kaiden stood beside him, mostly uninjured.

The telekinetic formed a shield between them and the Reaper from whatever materials he could draw from, while also launching him and Shepard into the air. Sweat dripped from Kaiden's brow as a terrible headache set in, usually indicating that he needs to stop.

That wasn't an option at that moment.

Fighting through the pain, Kaiden pumped even more telekinetic power the area around him as he launched himself and Shepard off the ground again.

"Kaiden," Shepard shouted to him. "Set us down behind that trench there."

Kaiden did as his Commander said and all but collapsed into the trench, holding his head as a headache likely created by all the fighting came over him. Shepard took a peek over the top and saw the Reaper was still floating in the air. An arm touched Shepard's shoulder, and Shepard drew his repeater in response.

He calmed down when he saw it was only Nihlus and Saren.

"What is that idiot doing?" Saren questioned as he looked out at Jenkins darting towards the Reaper, both middle fingers extended, and high-pressure blood firing out of his leg stumps.

Little did Saren know, this was a well-known tactic that Jenkins thought up just that minute, and involved three essential steps. First, approach enemy with suicidal intent. Second, distract enemies from allies at cost of pain. Third, have a healing factor.

With vigorous spray, the force of stump blood propelled Jenkins head first into the Reaper's side. Silence reigned as everyone tried to make sense of what happen. Then the Reaper decided that it was going to repay Jenkins by ramming into him as well, which caused Jenkins to void his bowels when he realized what was coming.

His look of dread was replaced by jubilation as the Reaper was shadowed by another figure from behind. The massive Thresher Maw was coming down at impossible speeds from the air, and there was no way the Reaper could turn in time to meet it straight on.

"What are you smiling about," cried Nihlus. "Now you're going to be crushed by both of them."

Jenkins's commons sense decided to kick in around this time. "Oh. Well shit," He elected to vacate the premises before he was squished, but fell over when forgot he didn't have legs. Jenkins gulped as an impact was heard, and then over a thousand tons of force grinded the Private against the floor.

"Ow."

Regardless, the collision between Squid and Worm was sensational!

The Ghost Rider burned hotter hell in the middle of July as he shot towards the Reaper at a extraordinary speed. Launching itself through the air, the Thresher Maw and its rider collided with its nemesis with a deafening clash that resonated across the battlefield.

Miles away, windows cracked, the earth shook, giving only the barest hints that at the site of battle, the ground was torn asunder. But for all the raw fury of the clash, for all the might that vengeance holds within the rider and his steed, it wasn't enough to stagger the mighty being that sat above the destroyer of civilizations. It wasn't even enough to shake the Celestial. The Reaper on the other hand, now had a large dent that composed most of its upper half.

Then with the simplest of acts: the raising of its staff, the Celestial turned gravity upside down.

Falling upwards, the Ghost Rider and his flaming beast were launched off and far away from the typical comfort zone of the ground and into the air with no sign of stopping. But Javik wasn't done.

Much like the defiance that exists in it's wielder's soul, the chain of the Ghost Rider shot through the air, making sure to flip off the laws of physics all along the way, burning through a mile of Earth, before rooting itself in place.

Yanking hard, the Ghost Rider forced both him and his mount down from high above where it had been expelled, going faster and faster, until all that could be seen of the Spirit of Vengeance was a hellish green fireball moving at incredible speeds, targeted at the one that left it tossed in the air with a promise of absolute destruction.

Terrible screeching filled the air as the Maw tore through hardened alien alloys, punching a hole in the hull of the Reaper and taking a limb from the machine. Sparks and metal shards colored the air as the Rider impacted the ground again.

The already damaged Reaper could take no more as it fell out of the sky. The Celestial, however, remained floating in mid-air, watching its mount fall with almost a hint of distaste.

The Ghost Rider seized this opportunity as it spurred its Thresher forward. Knocking over the already unbalanced Reaper, before wrapping itself around on one of the limbs of Reaper and smashing it against the ground.

The Celestial tilted its head at the turn of events. _Interesting_, it seemed to think. No matter, its research was complete, and the theory was sound. It could now finish the Rider off.

Instead of rising its staff up this time, it simply pointed down. Miles below the surface of Eden Prime, the plates cracked and fractures from the pressure exert on it. Miles above, a Ghost Rider found himself and his Maw being grinded against the floor by what seemed to be an invisible mountain.

The force of the mountain soon grew double, and then triple, until the Rider felt like the sky itself was falling upon him. He had no choice but to go with the force, and dig down. Digging down into the Earth, the Rider felt the pressure above him accelerate his decent, digging faster into the earth with the added burden coming from above.

But then his Thresher stopped dead, and began getting pushed upwards as well. He was slowly being crushed into a ball.

Miles above, the Celestial was clenching its hand together; a simple act that belies the tons of pressure being applied from all sides onto the last Prothean. Javik was, quite literally, in a death grip.

Then, salvation came above.

Like a comet thrown down by the hand of God, a blue phrased through space, the upper atmosphere, and slammed hard into the Celestial. A large detonation of element zero happened at point blank in the Celestials face. Miles away, Saren found this sight to be most spectacular. The Celestial itself found it more annoying.

Marion Stark, the Iron Lady, found herself pressed head first into what was described to be a god-like being's forehead. It was looking uninjured and unimpressed, which meant that she was looking at a lot of pain to come.

"Well," muttered Stark. "It was worth a shot."

Then she unleashed phrase two of her plan; she activated the "Nova" application in her core charged up by the impact, and let it loose in its face. An explosion of biotic energy was unleashed complete upon the face of Stark's foe. The Celestial staggered a bit from the blast that came unexpectedly at it. Then it batted Stark's metallic form into the horizon with its staff.

She responded by unleashing all her Iron Legion units she brought on it. Units thirty-five through forty-two all impacted the back of the Celestial at the same time, with unit thirty-seven drilling its way in, forty placing explosives, while forty-one just exploded in a kamikaze run.

Stark frowned at armor forty-one. It's always that one that goes kaboom.

The Celestial turned and force radiated from around it, almost instantly shredding thirty-seven and badly damaging forty. It was answered by a hail of sustained fire from every other still functional unit.

Plasma, repulsors, biotics filled the air as Stark herself rejoined the fray, firing off massive biotic strikes on the Celestial unit that warped the matter of the area around them. The Celestial remained undeterred as it thrust its hand out at the offending insect.

An impact of force slammed into Stark as her barriers gave out. Cursing to herself, she called upon armor units thirty-six and thirty-eight. The two around spiraled around Stark before their armored plates detached completely into the air and were magnetically attached onto Stark's _Adept Vanguard MK1, _drastically hardening her outer plating. She then overloaded the core of both the units and sent them on to explode on the Celestial.

The resulting detonation did nothing physically to the Celestial as the inferno filled the air before it. Then, punching straight through the fire and flames was a doubly armor blue blur at that slammed hard into Celestial's head before sacrificing her barrier to grant the Celestial another explosion.

From behind, unit forty activated its explosives. From the side, forty-two pulled off the utterly improbable and held the Celestial's arm in stasis while unit thirty-nine fired its rail gun into the Celestial's armpit.

All this succeeded in doing was scraping the outer shell of the Celestial badly.

An explosion of force filled the air with pieces of Iron Legion bits. As unit thirty-nine was shattered only Stark and unit forty-two were left. Stark knew what she had to do, and forty-two was the answer.

Across the times of life, the universe, of everything, unit designation forty-two of the Iron Legion had always been the most effective one out of the bunch. Though it wasn't always the same model, it seemed like whatever armor inherited the title of forty-two was destined for great things.

With purposed and power, forty-two flew at the Celestial and…landed gently in its hands, like a peace offering. This was soon revealed to be a trap when unit forty-two imploded.

Armor designation forty-two imploded into a miniature black hole, taking a few fingers from the Celestial's hand with it. Unfortunately, the Celestial decided to disagree with Newton as his wretched its arms free and batted the growing black hole at with its staff.

"Oh, come on!" Stark grumbled, before warping away from the approaching ball-o-suck. "How does that even work?"

Not a second later though, the sphere of implosion gave out and dissipated.

The Celestial turned to the Iron Lady power emanating from it, intent on ending Stark. Its focus was then quite rudely interrupted by a Thresher Maw head-butting it between the legs. Stark seized this chance to also charge into the Celestial's midsection. The impact launched the Celestial into the ground, creating a massive crater.

Rolling with the blow, the Celestial ended up quickly rolling to its feet despite the impact. Before him, the last Prothean rode on his Thresher ablaze, and above him hovered a Stark. Then the sky above them darkened and roared as colors shifted in the clouds above, and a massive portal opened in the upper atmosphere, unleashing hell up the Celestial beneath it.

"Well they took their sweet time," muttered Stark at the arrival of reinforcements.

A particle cannon shot to the back of the Celestial announced the arrival of Fury's personal Helicarrier, phasing into existence directly behind the Celestial. All three hundred particle cannons fired at once from the three-kilometer SHIELD airship upon the Celestial, shield still holding before the onslaught.

Then, out from the still open portal came a furious bearded green blur that finally pierced the protective shroud of the Celestial with roar that deafened the heavens above and a blow that shook the earth before leaping away. Following the Hulk was a storm of unimaginable proportions, which erupted out of the portal itself. As the winds grew stronger and the rain darkened the sky, a single hammer drew lighting to the God of Thunder. Chasing the storm was a Quinjet, flying defiantly through the winds and rain as it's back opened to reveal a woman in powered armor wielding in circular shield, an archer with a bow composed of pure energy, the Vibranium clad ruler of Wakanda, and a armored man who leaped out before growing to the size of a skyscraper.

But all were outdone by Doom the portal growing even larger before expelling a massive army of Doombots, followed by sixteen ships that looked suspiciously similar to the now fallen Normandy. Only after an aerial army capable of rivaling any Navy had emerged did Doom himself come onto the battlefield, floating atop several ships that looked a lot like a larger versions of the...

"THE NORMANDY? Why that goddamned bastard!" Fury growled venomously at the Latvian monarch, who wasn't so mindful of copyright infringement. He shook off his thoughts of hatred as he reassessed the situation at hand. "Philip!"

"Yes sir?"

"Deploy a shuttle to go find the Normandy, after that, execute the phase leap. Have us jump out of the negative zone right above the Celestial, and get the Warbirds on standby."

"Yes sir."

Surrounded but in now way outgunned, the Celestial rippled with power and force, preparing to unleash its full might upon the miserable creatures before it. At least that was how it seemed before a broken Reaper was used to whack the Celestial over the back of the head.

Turning to find the perpetrator, the Celestial found a man atop standing atop a runic sign in mid-air, dressed the most ornate of robes, and pinkest of boxers.

"En Garde," declared the Sorcerer Supreme, simmering with power as two massive spectral arms held the broken Reaper as a blunt weapon against Celestial.

It would have been very impressive, considering the magnitude of power the Sorcerer Supreme was displaying, but let's be honest, its hard to be badass when your underwear was such a shade of pink.

"Goddamnit Conrad," muttered Captain America, with a slight smile on her face, before the Quinjet itself joined the fray.

And thus began a battle that would ruin Eden Prime.

…

Miles away, two Spectres and a ragged SHIELD team were looking on at the scene unfold before them.

"Saren," said Nihlus.

"I know," replied Saren with a blank look on his face.

"Should we even bother calling reinforcements?"

"I would advise against that," stated Shepard looking at the Sorcerer drag comets down from outer space to bombard the Celestial to no avail while using the Reaper as a mallet.

Saren shivered at the thought of sending Council forces into that brawl. Imagining the Destiny Ascension being as a blunt weapon was a terrifying thought.

"No. Spirits. No. But there is one thing we could do." Nihlus looked at Saren with curiosity as the older Spectre activated his Omni tool to record the scene before him.

"Just so the Council believes us."

…

A Reaper was forced into a blade lock with the Celestial's staff as Sorcerer Supreme dueled the former rider of the Reaper with the Reaper itself. Across a storm-ridden sky, a Helicarrier shot across the horizon, an army of Doombots peppered the Celestial with shots from miles above as their overlord watched with folded arms, and a Quinjet tore through a hurricane to enter fray.

Conrad Verner wasn't the cleverest Sorcerer Supreme, not the most prepared, the toughest, or even the most skilled. He was, however, the most unpredictable, considering the fact that he himself didn't know what he was doing half the time. The simple fact is, while Stephen Strange preformed magic on the basis of understanding and manipulating forces. Conrad Verner cast his spells on foundation of not knowing how the spell worked, just that it did. In short, no one could fight the Sorcerer Supreme effectively because even he didn't know what the hell he was doing most of the time.

"Thunder! Thunder! THUNDER!" cried the Socerer Supreme as he channeled the power of Thor's storm into the Reaper, turning it into an electro-squidhammer.

Thor took the more straightforward response and just tossed his hammer at the Celestial, hitting it in the back of the head. If it did any damage, the Celestial certainly didn't show.

The Hulk smashed the ankle of the Celestial, while Giant Man tried to tackle the Celestial from behind, before being backhanded. The Celestial rectified this issue by infusing its force into around him, and in an instant, a nigh impenetrable barrier was erected around it.

The Celestial then took note of the Helicarrier that rematerialized above it before an entire platoon of Warbirds energy shots peppered its heads. Warbirds, also affectionately known as the Marvel Company were the legacy of one Miss Marvel, from back when the Avengers first were just starting out, and consisted entirely of meta-human fliers of different qualifications.

The Warbirds made strafing runs while thunder and rain covered them from the force blasts emitted by the Celestial. All this was going on while the Helicarrier disappeared from existence again to jump behind the Celestial to fire upon its exposed backside, and did just so.

…

Far above them, watching the battle and chaos unfold below, Doom sat on a throne within his ship that totally wasn't based off the design of the Normandy. He gazed deeply into the conflict, and was quite intrigued by the Celestial.

Out of all the individuals at play on this now ruined rock, Doom was the most experienced in Celestial encounters. Only a few could boast to match his knowledge in the way Celestials functioned, and because of this knowledge Doom suspected the authenticity of this Celestial.

Beings that rival Galactus, after all, shouldn't be obstructed by an amateur Ghost Rider, and would have long since retrieved the beacon by now, unless…

Doom decided to postpone his theorizing till later, after this situation was dealt with. Doom pressed a button on his throne, and in an instant, every single one of his Doombots and ships unleashed hell on the landscape below, painting the stormy sky green with blasts and beams. Maybe one of the shots might hit Fury.

Accidentally of course.

….

"Oh, just perfect!" This statement adequately described the entire situation Stark was facing. Green blots came down like raindrops; expect she didn't want any of these on her head. Muttering a sentence involving Doom having involuntary intercourse with the cannon of a warship, she darted left and right, firing biotic shots at the Celestial while also keeping herself away from the "friendly fire".

Conrad on the other hand, was surprisingly, doing quite fine. He summoned an shiny blue umbrella that seemed to take in any shot that impacted it. The Sorcerer Supreme congratulated himself on a clever move (that he just made up) by pumping his fists in the air. The Celestial took this chance to wretch the Reaper from his spectral arms and hit him over the head with it.

With the Sorcerer temporarily incapacitated, the Celestial turned to face his other threats. The fire that descended was actually working against his foes, who were forced to avoid, while it might as well be actual rain impacting his robust outer layer.

Gazing deep into the center of an oncoming storm, the Celestial could see through the chaotic winds, and discovered the God of Thunder within. Then, piercing through the storm was a hammer, dragging the hurricanes and lighting bolts along with it. Entire chunks of earth below were peeled away with ease as the hammer flew through the air; bringing forth a promise of an impact that will shake the heavens.

The Celestial caught the hammer and the entire storm following it with two fingers, like it was just holding a pebble. This was its first mistake. From out of the storm, over a hundred beams emerged, and cracked the barrier around the Celestial while its focus was still on the hammer.

And then, with a loud roar, Fury's Helicarrier tore through the storm.

Slamming into the Celestial with a Helicarrier over a hundred years ago would have been a stupid idea, considering previous Helicarriers had a tendency to fall out of the sky when its adversaries gave its engines a funny look. Then, in 2098, SHIELD began outsourcing its defense materials to Cho-Kerberos Incorporated. From then on, it was a different story.

To demonstrate this fact, when the Helicarrier finished ramming against the head of the Celestial, it flashed, disappeared, reappeared ten miles away, and then opened fired from that distance with its particle cannons before disappearing again. Needless to say, the Celestial wasn't too pleased about the situation.

Responding to this annoying fact, the Celestial decided to pull a disappearing act of its own. Forces formed and were focused into a drill beneath the Celestial, and in an instant, it went under. This when the Rider followed it down.

Tearing through miles of earth, an odd race happened between Rider and Celestial: one trying to find a better position to fight from, while the other was trying to hunt the first down. Unfortunately, this also caused some…issues relating the tectonic plates on Eden Prime.

…

Private Jenkins had already received his fair share of injuries to day. He was shot, blasted, crushed, and sunburned, but none of that could match up to what he was currently experiencing: the earth itself was swallowing him.

Seeing the distress that the Private was in, Kaiden took it upon himself to telekinetically pry Jenkins loose from the planet itself. Then the ground beneath him gave way.

Keeping yourself levitated is no hard task for a beta-level mutant. Keeping yourself, your entire team including one who was trapped between a few tons of rock, on the other hand is a bit tricky. So in a split second decision, Jenkins lost his (newly regrown) legs again, cutting him loose from the rocks.

Ignoring the dismayed cry of Jenkins, Kaiden kept the entire group afloat as Shepard surveyed the land around them.

Absolute devastation. That was all that could be said about the situation on Eden Prime. The ground shook and collapsed all around them; something was definitely happening underground. At least it couldn't get worse.

Then a Helicarrier ran into them.

Fury starred at the SHIELD team that was currently plastered outside the outside of his Helicarrier's front bridge in solemn annoyance.

"We—uh, seem to have located Commander Shepard and his team sir," chimed in Philip with as much cheer as he could. It really didn't go well with the image of Jenkins who as currently splattered all over the front windshield. Fortunately, everyone else was okay.

"I noticed, Philip," said Fury glaring at his men on the bridge. "Now if we could find a way to get them off from outside, instead of starring at all day, maybe we could get back to chasing that oversized bastard."

Agents all over the bridge responded. A few going for the buttons to open the blast doors to the outside, some going for jetpacks to retrieve the agents, and one grabbing a mop for Jenkins.

…

Hellfire melted through tons of rock with ease as the Thresher released another blast at the Celestial digging ahead, to no effect.

They had been at this for over ten minutes now, and the all the Rider managed to do was destabilize the entire region. Still, he was undeterred in his hunt for the Celestial.

Unleashing another massive fiery explosion outward, trying to bury the Celestial in a sea of hellfire. The Celestial responded by telekinetically drilling upwards, through the fire and the flames, and carrying on to burst above ground.

However, the moment it emerged, it was greeted by a massive blast of pure mystical energy.

The Sorcerer Supreme, no sporting a rather delicate bump on top of his head was back in the game. In the future, when he was asked on how he tracked the Celestial down so quickly while the area around him was, quite literally, falling apart and he himself was disoriented, he would say that he casted a tracking spell of no equal.

What actually happened was that he got his cape caught on the Rider's Thresher Maw when it dived after the Celestial while he was crawling out from under the Reaper that was brought down on his head.

Reeling from the surprisingly powerful blast from the Sorcerer, the Celestial, head now partially cracked open, lashed out to kinetically blast at him. Conrad scoffed as he blinked out of existence entirely, with a plan to attack the back of the Celestial.

However, Conrad never being one to judge distances well ended teleporting just right in front of the blast, taking the full force to his face. He ended up smacking into a Hulk in mid-leap, coming towards him.

Before the Celestial could make its next move, it was best upon by Thor, the Rider, and the Quinjet concurrently.

The Thunder God brought Mjolnir down upon the back knee of the Celestial while the Quinjet unloaded a salvo of antimatter rounds at the chest of the Celestial.

Though it held on, it was getting slower, and less responsive. The constant pressure or damage must have been taking its toll on the Celestial. Still, it stood up, still ready to fight.

That was when a massive transparent green blast hit it over the head, and punched a hole through part of it.

…

Doom clasped his hands together. Over the years, he had learned to combine technology and sorcery better than he did before. As a result, most of his weapons were now an amalgamation of both, and as a result were better than either.

The green beam that was currently gracing the "Celestial" below with its glow was from one of his Overlords, (which are totally not based off the Normandy) and considering that they functioned off of technology, but ran off of sorcery, they could theoretically fire for an eternity. However, his purpose was to test the effectiveness of his weapon, not its damage, so it stopped.

Deciding to cease the shot to survey the damage dealt to the supposed "Celestial", he saw that the outer skin of the Celestial had all but been peeled off. Doom praised himself internally as he began to monologue.

"Let it be known that none, except Doom deserves the—"

Before Doom could finish his monologue about what he deserved, he noticed the entire landmass being ripped out from Eden Prime itself and launched at him.

The Doombots scattered and all Overlords began charging up to fire. Doom wasn't going get out of the way of the landmass coming at him, Doom was going to punch right through it.

So he did, and in doing so, caused chucks of rocks and other materials to rain down on the combatants below, once again proving whom the biggest dick in the universe was.

…

Fury looked at the group assembled before him with an eyebrow raised: two Turian Spectres, a Stark security officer, a regenerating private, a beta-level lieutenant, and Shepard.

Agent Shepard certainly did take after his mother in the sense that he certainly had a weird crowd following him, but in this day in age, what team wasn't weird?

"Colonel."

"Agent, I see that the mission didn't go as planned." Nick Fury: Master of the Understatement.

"Yeah, not entirely certain how we are supposed to find the beacon considering the land has literally been ruined beyond repair," stated Shepard, looking out at Eden Prime: paradise no more. On the bright side, the real estate value in the area was down.

Ashley was the first to notice the uncomfortable look on Fury's face.

"Uh—Colonel is it? Why are you looking at us like that?" Ashley questioned.

"Beacon…" muttered Fury. Shepard blinked disbelievingly.

"You all forgot the beacon didn't you."

Fury's face scrunched up into a fine mix of annoyance, anger, and possibly denial. "Agent, we have been dealing with a Celestial here, so if you could _forgive _us…." Fury growled as sardonically as he could. "…We could get on with our lives, and deal with the problem at h-"

"Director?" Philip said.

Fury's face was now in a state of upmost irritation.

"What."

"The sky seems to be falling."

Everyone stopped to look outside. First, a few rocks fell onto the outer shielding of the Helicarrier, then in the distance large chunks of a city-sized landmass were falling from the sky. Fury narrowed his remaining eye at the descending debris.

Far above the falling debris, green lights and Overlord ships descended, and far below was a massive dust cloud that couldn't hide the reality that a battle was happening within it.

"All hands, prepare for phase leap. Get the Warbirds on standby," ordered Fury. "Shepard, make yourself useful and do something instead of just starring at me, Philip activate the _Rhodes Protocol. _ Get ready to execute it as soon as we emerge."

Shepard immediately turned to his group and began discussing their strategies. "Ashley, there is a armory aboard: make use of it. Jenkins…heal. Kaiden, you, me, Nihlus, and Saren are going after the beacon."

"Do we even get a say in this?" Saren grumbled.

"Not unless you want to be stuck aboard a Helicarrier doing nothing. Get whatever you need, when the _Rhodes Protocol _activates, there will be no going back.

"Wait," inquired Nihlus. "Just what is this Rhodes Protocol?"

"You'll know when it happens," answered Shepard.

Deciding to suit up according for their updated task, Shepard's team discarded their prior gear pertaining towards reconnaissance, and went straight into heavy weaponry.

If there music accompanying this scene, a preparation montage would have been complete. However, from Saren's perspective, the whole thing was quite absurd considering what passed as reasonable weaponry to the human's.

The first issue that leapt out at him was the fact that there was an entire wall devoted to knives, swords, and other melee weapons.

"Why do you even have all that?" Saren asked, point at all the pointy assortments on the wall.

"Oh, its mainly for those who are Ninjas or other individuals who are skilled in close-quarters," Shepard said while the plates of an exo-suit locked around him.

Ashley was picking out a rifle for herself. The G-34 Expander, adapted from Dr. Hank Pym's technology, the bullets had one main function that put them above others: they begin to expand after they managed to loge themselves in the target, and with a superheated tip to the round, there wasn't much it couldn't pierce.

Saren and Nihlus looked around at the odd weaponry that decorated the room. Some were gauntlets of some sort, others were rather simplistic looking guns at first glance, but really disturbed them was the armors in the armory. At the terminal standing before one of the armor stands, it seems that the humans had developed a way to cycle through their suits, rapidly, and it wasn't a surprise why they needed this function; there were thousands of suits displayed on the screen.

Curious, Nihlus tapped on one of the armors designated _Mockingbird. _ What emerged, amused Saren to no end.

"Good pick Nihlus, now you finally get to show off those well toned legs of yours." Saren mocked, appreciating the lack of leg plating— or leg anything—on the armor. Nihlus didn't respond to Saren, choosing instead to address Shepard.

"Agent… why does this exist?"

Shepard finished loading his Repeater when he looked upon the armor on display, and answered, completely serious. "Its for mobility."

Nihlus didn't bother responding to that statement.

"**Phase leap active, all hands stand still," **bellowed the ship's onboard computer.

"What happens if we don't?" Saren questioned.

"Well, then your face might end up inside Nihlus's chest," stated Shepard, nonchalantly.

Saren's mandibles opened in slight disgust.

…

It took the Giant Man fifteen minutes to dig through the mess that was once ground beneath him. It took another ten to run over to where the Celestial emerged. It just took Doom ten seconds to screw up everything. Typical.

Dodging falling masses of earth, shots from Doom's ships that gone astray, and blasts coming from the Celestial itself, Giant Man closed the distance to deliver a massive haymaker to the face of the Celestial.

Before it retaliate, the Hulk slammed into the lower back of the Celestial with both hands, digging his fingers into the outer plating, and trying to rip the Celestial's back open. This was when a lightning blast exploded on the outer chest of the Celestial.

It took two steps back to steady itself, and one more that grinded against the ruined land. The Celestial couldn't afford to waste much more time, it need the beacon, but before it could get to that, it needed to deal with the nuisances that troubled it at every turn.

Taking in all the force it could, the let loose a blast that could have been seen from orbit. Layers of earth peeled away, as the landscape torn apart. However, at the epicenter of the blast was a layer of protective glyphs thrown up in the nick of time, and behind it was one Conrad Verner: Sorcerer Supreme.

Gritting his teeth, he held up the glyphs against the unbelievably powerful blast leveling the land. Turn to give his allies a nod; he noticed no one was behind him.

It was at that moment that he saw most of the Avengers and a Quinjet holding on desperately to a flaming Thresher Maw that was hurling through the air on the other end of the glyphs. Conrad had thrown up his protective shielding on the wrong side.

The Celestial maintained its power, knowing that it had its foes on the ropes.

Then, it was drop kicked in the back of its head.

Standing before it, still glowing brightly from its phase leap, was Fury's Helicarrier, now operating under Rhodes Protocol. What this means is, it went from giant flying ship, to a massive bipedal form resembling that of the former hero War Machine.

It stood a head taller than the Celestial, and its ports were opening up to deploy its troops again. Before all this could be completed however, the Celestial was once again pierce by a transparent grow beam coming from behind. Doom was at play as well.

Numerous Overlord ships and Doombots descended upon the Celestial. On the other end, the Warbirds and SHIELD personnel were at the ready to put the Celestial down for good.

The Celestial sized up its numerous opponents, and immediately shot right off the ground. Blast into the sky, the Celestial took flight towards were the beacons located, and now probably, buried.

Undeterred both Doom and Fury's forces gave chase as the massive War Machine and a ridiculous amount of Overlords colored the sky with shots.

The War Machine was a persistent predator. With only one individual linked to the entire ship—Fury—there was no issue with coordination.

Firing the particle cannons on its shoulder, the repulsors on the War Machine launched it even faster after the Celestial.

Three blue beams cut through the air as one scrapped the Celestial right over its back, prompting it to project a few blasts backwards with prolonged engagement.

Flying right through the hits, whatever damage was done to the War Machine was quickly repaired; all thanks to nano-machines.

Still, the Celestial put more power into its as it dove down, trying to get to the beacon before more troubles came.

Doom had different plans. Having long since calculated the "Celestials" flight path in his head, he floated in adrift, waiting for his prey to come, before ensnaring it in mystical chains.

It didn't take long for the Celestial to break free from the bindings, but Doom's goal was accomplished by then. Parts of the Celestial were ripped off as the chains were broken, and Doom collected one piece of the Celestial that came falling near him.

Scanning the broken shard from the Celestial, Doom's eyes widened.

…

Shepard's team had left the Helicarrier the moment it engaged the Celestial. The idea was to get the beacon while the War Machine engaged the Celestial and deal with the situation.

Their dropship landed five minutes ago. They spent three just starring at the beacon while the War Machine brawled the Celestial in the background. Saren looked blankly at the gargantuan beacon standing before them.

"How are we supposed to get that out of here?"

"At least it isn't buried," stated Nihlus, looking up at the massive protruding beacon sticking out of from the ruined earth.

"I don't think I remember it being that big," Ashley added. Shepard shivered at statement; the blasted beacon was already giving him the jitters.

Kaiden focused his power and tried digging the beacon out from under the ground again but to no avail.

"It's like its rooted down to something." Kaiden declared.

"Well it—" A flash from the beacon interrupted whoever said that.

Ripping Kaiden from off the ground, and holding him up the air, the beacon shone furiously as it began doing something. Wasting no time, Shepard, pulled Kaiden out of the way from the beacon, and immediately regretted his decision.

He found himself the same position that Kaiden was in. And then, before anyone could do anything for Shepard, the beacon exploded, and forced itself down his mouth.

The group then starred at the convulsing Agent as he began glowing red, blue, and then green.

"Did he just eat the beacon?!" Nihlus groaned in horror. Kaiden simply brought his hand up to his mouth and touched it, thankful that it wasn't him.

…

A forceful elbow forced the War Machine backwards. By this point, the Rider had caught up the battle again, and slammed into the ankle of the Celestial, cracking it. Runes opened up in the sky as meteorites were summoned to bombard the Celestial.

Throwing a Shield up, it blocked the missiles coming at it from the Sorcerer Supreme, but was hit in the back by a dozen Overlord shots. Then the Hulk emerged, while also being flanked by Thor.

Blasting the Avengers' hard hitters away, a Quinjet fired a Uni-beam shot straight through its legs.

Bleeding black liquid, damaged, and overwhelmed, the Celestial drew force upon itself again. Or at least, it tried. Slowly but surely, it was getting slower, its power was getting weaker and…

In the distance, a massive flash came from where the beacon was and the resulting wave washed over all the combatants on the battlefield, without affecting most of them.

The Celestial, on the other hand, fell to its knees as it felt some part of itself fade away entirely. It tried to muster some kinetic energy but failed. The Celestial starred down at its hands as it tried to draw out power, but failed. It slowly began falling apart.

The Celestial was powerless.

Then instead of moving, or trying to muster up a defense, the Celestial just stayed still, as the light faded out from inside it. Its job was done. It succeeded.

A massive Vibranium rocket went into the Celestial's shoulder courtesy of the War Machine, and punched a hole through it. Seeing their enemy damaged, the Avengers pressed the advantage.

The Celestial fell back but caught itself before it could fall over. Seizing the advantage, the Avengers let loose. The Iron Lady became a glowing blue bullet once more and jumped right into, and through the lower abdominal region of the Celestial.

It didn't fall.

The Captain tossed her shield through the air with perfect accuracy, nailing the Celestial under the jaw, before the shield was launched through the back of its head when Mjolnir flew into it. Then three arrows flew into the cracks that made by the prior attack and exploded within the skull. The Celestial took another step back, clutching its head.

It didn't fall.

The Hulk leapt up on the back of the Celestial, smashing and ripping through the armor with out mercy.

It fell to its knees, black liquid dripping out of its cracked face. Still it made no attempt to fight back.

Chanting to himself, Conrad waved his hands wildly in the air and then with a brilliant flash of light…. Nothing happened. Until…

"Wait for it…"

The Celestial's stomach bent inwards as a spectral train rammed into it from out of nowhere.

Everyone stood still in silence for a second.

"Looks like he got… sooouuuullll traiiiiinnnneeeed!" Announced Conrad gleefully. Silence greeted him. He was undeterred; he had to try again.

"Looks that like that will give him indigestion!" He received no applause. All he earned was a face-palm from Stark.

"Hey Conrad," said Stark, while firing at the Celestial, blowing chunks of it off. "You know that thing you do, when your lips come together and sound comes out to make words?"

"You mean talking?"

"Yeah. Stop doing it."

Conrad frowned. No one liked his jokes.

A giant foot snapped the Sorcerer out of his melancholy as he noticed Giant Man attempting curb stomp the remaining chunks of the Celestial's face. Conrad decided to help by transforming the Giant Man's boot into a Chainsaw stiletto.

The Celestial's mangled face was stomped on a few more times before the head was completely sliced, crushed, and demolished.

Then a green blast ended it all. The Celestial began crumbling into dust as the glow faded from Doom's hand.

"It isn't a real Celestial," declared Doom.

"What the hell do you mean it's not a real Celestial?" Marion Stark asked, disbelievingly. The damn thing certainly throttled them like it was authentic, that's for sure. "Did you not see what it did to us? We barely beat it."

Doom scoffed at Stark's statement. Fools. What do they know about facing Celestials. He had fought, suffered, and prevailed against the Celestials more than anyone in the universe, and never once did a single team, without an overwhelming advantage, or device, of some sort take down a Celestial like this.

"Even before it was actually damaged, Doom knew. Celestials are comparable to the might of Galactus, but this one was brought low by a single team of Avengers, a half-wit who forgot his pants, and a single Helicarrier's resources. This is no Celestial, only a pale imitation," muttered Doom. "No Celestial would be killed like this, no Celestial would choose such a juvenile method of entrance, and no Celestial has been this limited in its application of power; this one only manipulated forces."

Stark threw her hands up into the air and began wandering towards the remains of the Celestial. "Great. Perfect. So now all we have to go on here is my destroyed colony, a fake dead Celestial with a broken mech-squid, and shield agent who apparently ate the beacon I dug up."

"But who could make a fake Celestial, and have it attack Eden Prime?" asked Captain America, face full of worry. "And why?"

"I didn't even get the insurance set up," groaned Stark, head in her hands.

Doom held up the part of the Celestial's shattered head. Though its face was cracked and shell was broken, he could still feel the power emanating from within. Whoever could make an artificial Celestial, even a pale imitation, and force it to fight in such a manner, was powerful beyond measure, and undoubtedly, mad.

Thanos was the first person that Doom could think to be able to achieve something such as this, but it didn't make sense: the mad Titan had recently been exiled to an alternate universe, and Doom would know if he had returned. Also, why Celestials? And fake ones at that?

He needed to investigate, and deal with this threat, to prove that none shall match Doom. For the first time since Reed Richards died, Victor Von Doom felt a spark of life come back into him.

Doom turned and warped away, leaving the Avengers stranded behind.

Stark scowled at the slowly disappearing Doom. She could finally understand why her grandfather hated this man so much.

"Dick," hissed Stark.

"Verily."Thor announced, finally landing beside his team.

...

"Alright that's enough of that, lets get the Agent out of here," Said Fury, looking towards the unmoving and still smoldering Shield agent. As the director approached Shepard, the agent suddenly began glowing green, red, and then blue again. The Director stopped dead in his tracks and turned to look at Ashley.

"Yeah, he does that, every now and then."

Fury grimaced and he began to massage his temples.

"On second thought, let's wait till the specialists get down here from the Helicarrier and properly extract him. It looks like someone just got an origin story here, and until we know what the beacon did to him, no one touch hi—goddamnit Conrad!"

Conrad immediately let go of Shepard's legs. Conrad was, in no way, trying to pry Shepard's pants off. SHIELD pants were badly designed anyway.

"I-I was just checking for a pulse!"

Fury couldn't tell if he was lying.

…

A few steps away, two Spectres were discussing how the after action report was going to sound.

"So Nihlus, what are we supposed to tell the Council," asked Saren.

"The Truth?"

"… Nihlus, if you can explain to the Council how a robotic death-squid of the Geth forces along with their godly overlord came down to Eden Prime, destroyed everything in a brawl with human forces, a flaming Thresher Maw being ridden on a skull, an army of robots, and forced a Shield agent to destroy Prothean beacon with his mind without Sparatus dismissing it as a rumor, I'll give you my rifle."

"Well, they can't ignore us both."

"You obviously don't know Sparatus."

"I—"

"They will listen to me!" was the growled out phrase that ended their discussion. The Ghost Rider stood before them, more fiery and furious than ever, despite bringing the Celestial low. "Your Council will believe me!"

Saren grimaced internally, hands fidgeting with his gun. "I am not certain about—"

"They will believe what I say! If they decide not to, I will feed them to my mount!"

The Thresher Maw gave that statement a joyous roar, and made slurping noises.

Nihlus looked to Saren again. "You think we still need to include the part with the inferno Thresher."

"Probably not. We can just show them instead," muttered Saren, dreading his upcoming meeting with his superiors. "They aren't going to like this."

Nihlus starred at the Thresher Maw. "We're probably going need to worry about getting a big enough ship for that first."

* * *

**Important Ramblings**: The Universes of Marvel, comic issues, different individuals, and even writing/description quality will vary with the situation like in different comic issues, so don't be surprised to see one chapter going "Boobs! BUT THE BOOBS ARE ACTUALLY GUNS! EXPLOSIONS! NOW EVERYONE FIGHTS!" in the way the first two chapters after the prologue couldn't give a care about the plot, and then another going all cloak and dagger. Then again, this all depends on how sober I am while I write this, and what kind of compulsive thoughts Mr. Brain forces upon me. Oh, and missing details here will be explained later.

* * *

Looking across at the ruined landscape, stood a group people, all dressed in suits.

This was Eden Prime, and it was their job to make it so again.

"All yours guys," declared the Iron Lady without a second glance given.

"Thanks a lot."

It was their job to fix Eden Prime. They hated their jobs.

**_Damage Control's after issue mayhem coming soon..._**


	5. Trouble on the Citadel Issue 1

**Author's Note**: Apologies about the delay, but alas, work cometh before pleasure. All right, currently Shepard is in somewhat of a coma, but by the end of this double-fisted impact issue that will be resolved. Anyway, while the Heroes/Destroyers of Eden Prime are on their way back to the Citadel to explain how they accidentally ate a beacon and broke a planet, the Council and friends associates, certain troubles arise on the home front just in time for….

**Troubles on the Citadel Issue 1**

Sometimes, words cannot elaborate how messed up a sight is. In situations such as these, one may find oneself going for statements like-

"Jesus H. Christ."

Such was the case for Chora's Den, or what remained of it.

"Would you like to explain this, Agent Bailey?"

Bailey sighed as he turned to address his Council counterpart and daily pain-in-the-ass, Executor Pallin. Ever since Bailey took up the position of SHIELD's Citadel Security Service for the American Embassy on the Citadel, meant to deal with all troubles caused by the first wave of human immigrants, things have been a bit more…hectic.

"Would I like to? No?" The Executor glared at him for the curt statement, causing Bailey to raise his arms off to ward off some of the animosity. "Relax, Executor. I didn't mean anything by it. Look, I'll be honest with you: I have no idea how a human could be impaled through a Krogan like that."

The Executor lessened his glare's intensity and surveyed the scene before him. Chora's Den, had, in honesty, gotten its shit wrecked. Half the bodyguards were embedded into the roof, most of them still alive and writhing in pain. A few were sporting large messy holes through their heads and chests, but there were many more missing chunks in the room that seemed to have been completely obliterated, and finally, Fist himself was dead along with his bodyguards: the club owner impaled horizontally through his primary Krogan bodyguard. Whoever did this was brutal, powerful, and likely a group of humans considering the weirdness intertwined with the destruction. Pallin scowled.

"I need a list of every meta-human on the Citadel, Agent."

"Well," started Bailey, obviously sensing an impending argument, which he fully intended to win. "Considering that we got over three thousand supers among, its probably going to take you some time to get through them all."

Pallin was undeterred.

"I don't care Agent. I will hunt every single one of them down alone if I have to."

Bailey looked at him with a frown. "One question, what will you do once you find the perpetrators."

"Arrest them."

Bailey fought the urge to bash the Executor over the head. Its like C-Sec doesn't understand that you don't just arrest supers.

"There is a process regarding supers that demands a giant brawl, then more fighting, and then negative zone prison. Even that doesn't typically work, considering that there seems to be a prison break every month."

"Well then, Agent," growled Pallin. "What do you intend we do? Just bend over for those who possess the ability to do the impossible."

"Simple, we get our own—"

"Badassfully: You are both wrong."

Bailey and Pallin simultaneously turned their heads at the source of the voice. At the rather devastated entrance of the club were two figures: one, an Elcor big even for his species, and the other, a Hanar. A Hanar with six Revenant rifles strapped to its back.

Bailey raised an eyebrow at the floating tentacle-dominated jellyfish. He really though that C-Sec was just bullshitting him and the rest of SHIELD when they described the Hanar. The damn thing looked like the disturbed love child between some perverted animator with a schoolgirl fetish and every shade of the color pink.

"This one thinks that both of your brains have spent too long in Vorcha urine. This one also thinks that Pallin needs to go reproduce with his own eye sockets if he thinks that a group of meta-humans achieved this."

Palllin jaw dropped. "What the hell gives you the authrit-"

"Badassfully: Spectres."

Bailey and Pallin looked at each other and realized that they were no longer in command of the case.

"Sonnabitch!" Bailey cursed. "Varren shit!" Pallin declared.

This only amplified the amount of mirth Blasto was feeling at that moment.

"This one will take charge of the operation from here. Maybe actual progress will be made."

"Go eat a dick, Jellyfish," growled Bailey.

"This one doubts that you are very nutritious."

**BLASTO and BUBIN MYSTERIES!**

**Issue 1: A Study in Utter Mayhem**

"Badassfully: I see that there is a dent the size of a average Turian foot in the wall."

Bailey snorted. "Yeah so?"

"Badassfully: The dent has a strong scent of Asari perfume, meaning that the perpetrator had come from the market district."

Irritation dominated Bailey's face as he tried to wrap his head around how the Elcor could tell all that from a single dent in the wall.

"Badassfully: Rudimentary, dear human. First understand that the imprint is around standard Citadel size of 10, and judging by the dented structure"

_Huh, _mused Bailey internally after taking all that in. _Apparently Sherlock Holmes reincarnated as a land whale. Conan Doyle must be rolling in his grave right now. _

But one thing didn't add up. "Wait, how do you know what kind of perfume that was?"

Bubin was silent for a brief moment. "Painfully: I have a sister."

"Oh." Bailey understood.

Not too far away, Blasto was interrogating the witnesses to the slaughter. It seems that though the perpetrator brutally massacred Fist's thugs and security, he left the patrons and dancers unharmed.

Obviously, this meant Blasto, being the suave spectre he was, needed to speak to all of the Asari dancers privately. For specific information and trauma management that only he could provide of course.

"This one understands that you all have suffered from terrible mental trauma. This one is here to provide comfort; do not hold back your emotions."

The Asari just starred at the Spectre.

"Actually, it was kind of…..exciting."

Blasto thought he misheard. "This one is sorry. This one's auditory senses seem to be sensing excrement being dispelled verbally right now."

"Fist was an asshole," added one of the Asari dancers. "He always had people who had some issues with him, muscling his way into the Citadel underworld with his abilities."

"Abilities?" Blasto inquired. "This one did not know that Fist was a meta-human."

Another Asari scoffed at the mention of Fist's power. "It wasn't all that special comparatively; he just punched stuff really hard. Usually they were people who displeased him," she cast a downtrodden eye to the floor. "Sometimes, we displeased him, and he reminded us why no one was willing to leave his service."

"Forgive this one," said Blasto quietly, unwilling to cause some bad memories for the Asari to resurface. "This one did not know."

"Its okay. At least the bastard is dead now." The Asari chuckled bitterly. "It's funny how all this start with a shot, and then ended with a lot more."

"A Shot?" questioned Blasto.

"A shot…" the Asari confirmed.

_A few hours ago_

"I want a shot of ryncol," spoke Garrus, intent hidden under his grin.

In the corner of his eye, he could see the Krogan bodyguard narrow his gaze at him.

"Are you sure about that?" asked the bartender. "Turians usually can't handle that stuff."

"'I'm not your usual Turian."

Eying Garrus suspiciously, the Bartender glossed over the odd rifle Garrus had strapped over his back, and the even stranger design of his armor. Whatever he was using it definitely wasn't Turian standard.

Against his better judgment the Bartender began pouring the radioactive liquid into the Turian's glass.

"It's interesting," spoke Garrus, after the down the shot. "They said that nothing less than a Krogan should be able to take a shot like that without being affected. Looks like that was a load a crap."

Garrus could see the Krogan bodyguard grinding his teeth together.

"You wanna know what I think," Garrus continued. "I think that this is a perfect representation of the Krogan's compensation complex as a whole. In fact, I think that having four balls is essential to their existence; two wouldn't be enough to justify how stupid they are."

A loud growl erupted from the bodyguard as he stomped his way over to Garrus, fully intent on employing violence. Smiling to himself, Garrus noticed the Bartender motioning to the other guards as the room grew tense and people began to take their leave of the area.

"Well now," Garrus turned smiling at the oncoming Krogan. "Look what we have here, a live demonstration of Krogan ideology. Or at least the lack thereof."

Before that sentence was over the Krogan had his gun pressed into Garrus's head.

"Whoa there," Garrus chuckled with his hands raised. "Don't take offense: I didn't really mean any of that."

The Krogan glared hard at the Turian he had at his mercy. "Then why do you seek to provoke me?"

"Because you're large enough to use to block all the shots."

"What sho—" The Krogan didn't get to finish this sentence. In the span of a blink, the rifle that was on Garrus back was employed: specifically, it was fired through the Krogan's skull, killing the bodyguard almost instantly.

What happened next was far more absurd.

With a fierce thrust, Garrus impaled the rifle through the chest of the Krogan and switched the firing function to _implode_. Panicked cries erupted from the room as the other guards noticed that their heavy had been downed.

In a matter of seconds all fire was focused on Garrus's position, but all was going according to plan for Garrus; the corpse of the Krogan was serving its purpose well.

It took Garrus one pull of the trigger to make the guards realize they were out of their depth.

A bright orange beam unlike anything they had ever seen impacted one of the guards. In the first second, his colleagues saw that he was slowly being compressed inwards towards a small orb where the shot was landed. In the next second, he was completely absorbed and the orb grew bigger, taking in a few other guards as well.

Those fortunate enough to be of distance were spared as they took cover. A few seconds went on as the orb stopped expanding. Poking his head out, a guard looked upon the massive bright orange orb in the middle of the room.

"I think its ove—" The orb exploded and the man was killed by his colleague's kidney, that was launched out like shrapnel through his head.

Cursing to himself, the Bartender dove under the counter again and went for the emergency stash of grenades they had in the place. Quickly tossing one at where the Krogan was still standing.

Spotting the explosive sailing through the air, Garrus ducked under the Krogan fired from between his meat-shield's leg. It was an improbable shot to be taken from that angle, but as all things with Garrus, the odds were never enough to stop him.

Before the Grenade could even get into range, the shot had landed. The resulting explosion launched pieces of shrapnel into the bartender's chest.

Desperately grasping on to life, the Bartender clawed for another grenade he could chuck at his would be killer. Unfortunately, by the time he tossed the explosive, he took a final shot to the head. However, the grenade did find its way over toward where a group of Asari were hiding.

Cursing his luck, Garrus dove out from behind his Krogan shield and shots filled the air, but that didn't matter: innocent people didn't deserve this fate.

Skidding across the ground with a terrible screech, Garrus slid under the numerous rounds sailing over his head, his enemies taking advantage of his now vulnerable form,

Or so they thought.

A flash of light erupted from the left arm of Garrus as he formed a hardlight shield while continuing his mad dash over to the still rolling grenade, ramming through scores of random guards.

Sliding across the floor in one swift burst of speed, Garrus bounced the grenade off the floor and swatted it across the room, using his shield as a bat.

Screams of horror and disbelief came out the throat of an unlucky Batarian guard, but they were cut short when the grenade lodged itself through his mouth and into his windpipe.

Three seconds, an explosion, and a splatter formed from what was once a Batarian lead to the survival of a small group of dancers.

A good deed well done. Of course this was not to go unpunished.

A Carnifix round impacted hard on Garrus's shoulder, sending his reeling backwards, injury prevented only by the superior quality of his armor. More shots quickly followed as Garrus's position was peppered with fire.

Cursing his temporary lapse in focus, Garrus found himself rolling into cover next to the dancers he saved, who were starring at him in utter bewilderment and awe.

"Ladies, try to stay low," spoke Garrus quite calmly despite the hailstorm of rounds whizzing over the top of his head. "Things are about to get a bit messier."

The Asari dancers he was addressing could only nod at him.

Going prone, Garrus planted his feet against the side of his cover, and tapped his omni-tool; when adrenaline flooded his system he pushed out and slid across the floor.

Time seemed to slow for the Turian mercenary as accelerator rounds flowed through the air like droplets of rain caught in the wind. His adversaries were seemingly frozen in time compared to his unrestrained movement, and then Garrus took aim.

With five guards, two to the left, and Spirits knows how many to the right, Garrus squeezed the trigger on his rifle.

They didn't stand a chance.

Cleaving through the air like they were guided by something divine, each one of Garrus's shots rang true as orbs of orange found themselves attached to five very unfortunate heads. Said heads then quickly collapsed in on themselves. By this time, the adrenaline started to wear, off: Garrus needed to rely on himself now.

Spinning into a roll over a table at a seemingly impossible speed, Garrus fired twice more at the targets that were on the left side. However, though the first shot rang true, the second target, a Drell, managed to block the shot with his own shotgun, before quickly tossing his weapon away to avoid getting imploded.

Garrus flashed a bestial smile at the sight of an actual fight on his hands. Foregoing logic and weaponry, Garrus slammed into the Drell with a double leg takedown, completely uncaring of the numerous shots coming from his many adversaries on the right side of the room.

Garrus's bloodlust only increased when he felt the Drell's ribs shatter on impact, each one cracking with snapping sensations sending shudders through Garrus's shoulder. Continuing to drive forward, Garrus launched himself and his victim over the bar counter as shots filled the area around them.

Hacking up blood and spit, the Drell gritted his teeth as he began to fight for his life.

Garrus was not going to have any of that.

As the Drell reached down to push Garrus away and expose him for his cohorts to fire upon, the Turian proved craftier and caught the Drell by the fingers. A terrible scream was heard as Garrus twisted downward, snapping the fingers like twigs.

What quickly followed was a right hook to the liver, and a hold that put the Drell between a wall of shots and Garrus.

Absolutely shredding everything, the Drell guard turned to bloody mist, and smoke filled the air.

Coming on forward to check where their foe was, the vanguard of the bodyguards found nothing but their ruined comrade.

"He is not here!"

"Then where is he?"

"Behind you."

Spinning around in alarm, the guard unloaded their guns in unison. Just as Garrus expected them to.

Coming up from behind the guards while they were firing at where they thought he was, in thanks to a distraction module on his omnitool, Garrus began his march of extermination.

Firing through odd angles and stances that were as weird as they were unpredictable, Garrus cut through six guards before the rest started turning around.

Pivoting on the tip his foot, Garrus sidestepped a hail of bullets heading towards him before going to a knee and firing off several more shots.

Spinning from a crouch into the air, Garrus fired several more shots that struck his intended targets. Landing hard on the ground in the midst of his adversaries, Garrus spun, firing with perfect precision using a single arm.

With a lightning fast movement, he reached out and dislocated a nearby guard's wrist before firing into him at point blank range.

Catching the fallen guard's pistol before it could hit the floor, Garrus went to his back and fired with both hands, ripping through the ranks of foes before him

With one final shot, Garrus fire a shot from his pistol into the hand of one of the few remained bodyguards left, causing the guard's gun to go off unpredictably in his friend's chest.

Walking over to the guard clutching his hand, Garrus sighed as he planted his foot firmly into the downed mook's face. A sickening crack was heard, and then nothing more.

The room stood quiet beyond the hissing sound of Garrus's rifle reloading. A scene of carnage had been painted, and Garrus Vakarian was the artist. All that was missing was the centerpiece of this operation: Fist himself, who was nowhere to be seen.

Then a wall was shattered.

**Exaggerated Ramblings**: In the time between this update and the last, numerous mayflies have passed away. In memory of the lives of these fleeting creatures, I have decided to upload "world building" chapters every few days or so, just to keep the pace going and build up a Universe while what I have cleverly disguised a plot shambles towards the end with both arms up its own butt. So basically, expect more updates from now on. Oh, and the Destiny Ascension will get molested by a Dragon. Next chapters up soon.


	6. Trouble on the Citadel Issue 2

**Disclaimer: Author owns nothing. Not Marvel, not Mass Effect, not even his own freedom. **

**Author's Mouth Farts**: In today's chapter, we learn about how a Dragon deals drugs, look into the weird dreams that Shepard is having, and realize just how many idiots it takes to cause a giant lizard's public indecency.

**Trouble on the Citadel Issue 2:**

**Dragon Indecency**

Chunks of wall flew out outwards, covering the room with debris and wreckage. From within the dust and smoke emerged a disproportionate figure for a human: Fist.

He stood a few heads taller than a Krogan; not quite as wide but there was little doubt of his ridiculous physicality. Dressed with a waistcoat with several buttons gone sticking out the wrong holes, there was a sense of eloquence that the figure utterly failed to display. All these details were overshadowed by the sheer size of his arms and hands. It was like a baby with tree logs instead of arms.

_Humans never cease to grow ever more ugly and stupid, _mused Garrus glossing over his adversary.

The air stood still as the two foes found their eyes gravitating towards each other, scanning for weakness and hesitation. Dust flowed through the air obfuscating the Asari dancers' view of both Archangel and Fist, and for a second, it seemed like the tension in the room was about to boil over; the battle was to begin.

Then they broke out coughing.

"Dam—_cough_—damn, I mean damn," grumbled Garrus, desperately trying to clear his throat of the powerful tasting dust. "_cough_—Just how much dust are you hiding in these walls?"

"He-, ah crap, I went through the wrong wall." Fist spoke with resignation, inhaling deeply before realizing his mistake and trying to cough out the white dust. "I knew I shouldn't stored the product in them flimsy things."

"Wait," Garrus questioned. "You stored all your produce in your wall? Produce? Drugs? Why? That's absolutely stupid!"

"Well," Fist started. "Firstly, its called White Sand."

Garrus felt the urge to groan. _White Sand?_ That's what he decided to call the drug? That's like naming a heavy ordinance rifle 'large pew-pew', or calling a cab a 'pickup beep-beep'.

If everyone named their bloody things literally, the Universe would be a stupid place. Oh wait, he was talking about a guy called Fist: not a lot of naming innovation to begin with.

"Spirits," Garrus groaned. "You need to kill your marketing director."

"Hey! I think it's a great name. On that note, my marketing director recently drowned. Quite sad really."

Garrus raised a brow plate at that comment.

"Ah," Fist understood. "I know what you're thinking, and most times you would be right. But honestly, he just kinda fell into the Presidium Lak-."

This was when Garrus shot him in the chin. Archangel was not a patient Turian, and there was only so much pointless banter he could take. It was like reading a story, getting to the penultimate battle, and then realizing that all the hero and villan wanted to do is talk.

Garrus hated small talk. Hate made him angry. Anger could only be soothed with extreme violence.

A miniature implosion opened up on Fist's face, but not before he literally ripped the growing implosion and tossed it right back at Garrus. This action did however, come at a terrible price; Fist was now hairless on the right side of his face.

_Right, _thought Garrus, _Humans have a fleeting relationship with physics._

Furious, Fist gritted his teeth and picked up the nearest thing that he could find—a henchmen's corpse—and launched it a Garrus.

Quickly sliding under the deceased projectile, Garrus fired off three shots at Fist, who quickly used the well-known defense of using your other dead men to take the shots.

In a rare moment of brilliance, Fist threw two the still imploding corpses at Garrus before leaping at the Turian.

Sliding into a roll, away from punching distance, Garrus cracked his neck. "Alright, I have to ask again."

Fist swung another massive punch at him. "What?"

"Why the walls?"

"Yeah, it seemed like a good idea at the time you know. I mean, who in their right mind would completely demolish a entire wall when there would be a easier way to walk in," declared Fist hypocritically.

Garrus pointed at a Fist sized hole in the wall.

"I needed to make an entrance," Fist shrugged, intending to defend himself against hypocrisy.

Sadly by this point, only Fist was interested in debating; Garrus was more inclined to stick a sticky explosive on his opponent's crotch.

This caused a brief pause between the two adversaries.

"Dick move Turian."

An explosion rippled through the room as Fist covered in an explosion. For a second it seemed like Garrus had won, but…

"But too bad I got balls of steel," hissed Fist before sailing forward to pulverize his Turian adversary.

Garrus sighed as he realized the inevitability of having to do this the hard way; cursed heavies never go down easy. Evading the massive haymaker coming was easy, as Garrus maneuvered behind Fist before the human could effectively react.

Then, unexpectedly in moment of temporary brilliance, Fist reached down next to him, and blindly tossed an Asari dancer at Garrus.

Time slowed again as Garrus's armor fired synthetic adrenaline into him. He had two choices ahead of him. One was to evade under airborne dancer entirely and shoot Fist before the bastard could do anything else. However, this would likely put the odds of the dancer's survival into the hands of fate. The second was to use catch the dancer with one hand and shoot Fist with the other. He could do—

Fist then threw another dancer. Then another, and another, until every single one was sailing through the air, wailing their heads off.

"Dick move human," muttered Garrus as flailing dancers filled the room, and Garrus sprung into action.

Shouldering his rifle, he managed to shove the closest airborne dancer downwards, granting her a bruise instead of broken bones. Then he moved on to the next two, deciding to tackle both of them out of the air and using them as a cushion for where the third one was going to land.

The plan worked well, despite the pained cries from the Asari, and Garrus spun around to catch the last one right when his adrenaline was wearing off, just in time for Fist to use the dancer as a bludgeoning tool, sending Garrus's rifle scattering off his should and throwing him to his back.

"I learned this move from Angry Birds!" Fist declared with far too much pride while the Dancer dangled whimpering in his hands.

Shaking off the dark spots in his vision, Garrus tiled his head at Fisk, who was slowly walking towards him, cracking his knuckles. Garrus cursed himself internally: he really should have seen that coming.

Fist dropped the now very bruised and shaking dancer/blunt instrument to the ground. This sight did not please Garrus at all.

Perhaps a bit more violence could change the Turian's mood.

Garrus plotted as Fist swung wildly at him again, ripping out parts of nearby furniture with each missed blow. Rolling out of the way as Fist bulldozed his way through tables, counters, and corpses, Garrus began to revaluate his situation.

This was not an unfamiliar circumstance, fighting a physically superior foe, in absence of weaponry capable of dealing with the situation. Garrus would have to improvise. He was good at that.

_The problem exploiting the weak spot, I'm probably not going to be able to retrieve the rifle, the distance is to far. Then how will I-eye….eyes…his eyes! Lets see if his upper face holes are as hard as the rest of him, _thought Garrus, slowly moving towards the bar.

Ducking under a rippling left hook, Garrus fired a few pistol shots into Fist's face to no effect other than allowing Garrus enough time to grab the liquor he was looking for.

The makers of Tuckanka Fire™ seemed like they were deliberately lying when the commercials said that it could "melt the skin off a Salarian faster than it takes a Vorcha to grow old". The viewer would be right in this assumption, because the damn thing is so much worse.

Made from an acidic chemical compound commonly derived from Thresher spit, some radioactive isotopes, Varren saliva, and the most hellish peppers that could only be homegrown on a barren wasteland. It is said by the survivors that Tuckanka Fire will be your mentor in pain and fire, or decay and death.

This proved quite true when utilized by Garrus.

If Fist's eye were a person, it would pee out poop from how much pain it was suffering.

"OHMIGODTHEPAINITBURNSJESUSWHY!"

If Fist's eyes had a mouth, it would be praying to the Great Old Ones to end its suffering before such ungodly pain.

"AGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHNOOOOOOOOO!"

If Fist's eyes were fruits, they would be a goddamn tomatoes.

"STOPPPIT!"

Sensing a chance to trump his adversary while he was flailing about, Garrus darted over towards where his rifle would be.

Before he could get two steps though, he was forced to take evasive maneuvers again: Fist was bouncing around the room with both hands outstretched like a mad-man doing his best impression of a pin ball, landing, penetrating, and crushing his fallen guards underfoot.

Upon his third landing, Fist noticed that he was literally wearing his Krogan bodyguard around his waist, and was sailing through the air like a gory ballerina. A gory ballerina that people would pay to leave the stage because he was so damn ugly.

Seeing another one of his assaults fail, Fist let out a raging squeal that was unbecoming of a man his stature: he had enough of this bullshit. This was going to end now. Sadly, Garrus disagreed.

When Fist rushed forth to crush Garrus completely, the Turian, instead of evading like he did time and time before, slammed into Fist, chest first into Krogan-skirt.

The point of this close quarters engagement by Garrus was not to outfight Fist, no, that would be foolish. The goal was to get knocked back in the right direction so that Garrus could enact the final phase of his plan.

Deliberately taking a blow on the hardest part of his chest plate, Garrus positioned his landing right into the bar counter. Seeing his opponent at a disadvantage, Fist dashed in to finish the brawl with a powerful right hand.

Garrus cracked a grin.

Garrus vetoed Fist's oncoming assault that by splashing the still opened bottle of Ryncol into Fist's face. Fist was entirely fine until Garrus activated the Omnitool's incinerate function into Fist's head.

Did you know that Ryncol is really flammable, and even if you only have half a face of hair, it still burns well? Fist does.

Running around with his head of fire, Fist immediately dove over the counter to pour more liquids over his head in haste to put the flames out. Unfortunately, Fist being the reactionary genius that he is, picked many more flammable liquids instead of any water.

What could be considered a bonfire on Fist's head soon erupted into a full-blown inferno, and consumed the still hairy side of Fist's face.

"You don't look so hot Fist," taunted Garrus, while wincing internally at how bad that line was. How do these humans know what say in situations like these?

"Gahhhhh!" Fist added, running around in the room like a chicken with its head cut off.

With a shake of his head, Garrus pulled one of the few intact seats left in the bar and sat down, watching the fiery mess of a human prance about the room screaming for water but only succeeding in pouring more alcohol into the flames. It was a stupid sight that was befitting of a stupid man.

"This," Garrus stated. "Would be a mercy killing by this point."

Taking his time to slowly stroll towards his rifle, while Fist continued to heat up the dance floor right behind him, Garrus picked up his weapon and took aim.

Fist quickly found a implosion bolt inside his throat, growing larger and larger. He clawed, gagged, and pleaded, but it just kept getting bigger, until it suddenly stopped, and Fist lost his jaw, literally.

An anticlimactic end to an oversized idiot.

The Asari dancers looked on in morbid excitement as they saw their horrible employer collapse lifeless to the ground.

"Well now," Garrus smirked, giving the dancers a sideways glance. "It looks like he bit off more than he could…

_Present_

…_chew_," finished the Asari, finally done recounting most of their tale.

Blasto took in this information and looked around the room.

"Where did the mysterious one depart to afterwards?"

The Asari looked to each other.

They all collectively shrugged. "He just strode through the smoke without saying another word after taking something off Fist's corpse."

"This one understands," Blasto said. "Is there anything more than could be valuable for this one to know?"

"Well, he was kinda handsome,"

"That gun he has is quite spectacular!"

"His visor is such an odd shade of crimson…"

And on and on they went about how great their mysterious Turian Savior was, much to the displeasure of Blasto, who was now relieved of an important opportunity to play hero.

_Spawn of questionable birth, _cursed Blasto internally. It would capture the one who did this if it had to break all the rules. Well, more rules than he typically breaks. Nobody tentacle-blocks Blasto, least of all filthy vigilantes.

Floating over towards, frustrated and motivated at the same time, Blasto floated over to Bubin.

"Badassfully: I take that the 'interrogations' did not go well." Bubin spoke, deliberately trying to annoy Blasto

"This one thinks you should go reproduce with yourself."

"Badassfully: I would, but I do not think I am Elcor enough to take myself," Bubin boasted.

"This one thinks you mean you are not Elcor enough to find 'yourself'," Blasto attacked.

"Badassfully: Now you are confusing me with yourself," Bubin parried.

"This one," started Bailey mockingly. "Thinks that we need to get back to the case, and stop talking about our own genitals."

"Agreed," added Pallin, having enough of the childish display between the Spectres.

"Badassfully: Fine. While Blasto was doing nothing, I managed to discover another clue," Bubin motioned towards the wall.

Bailey began to massage his temple. Either this Spectre was a phenomenal detective or he had invested points in powers of bullshit detection. This was just far too convenient to-

"Never mind that shit now: the Destiny Ascension is getting molested!" roared a Turian cop running past them. Quickly running along behind was an entire SHIELD response team, eager to join in on the action.

"What?" questioned Bailey, not certain if he made the mistake of pouring Jack Daniels into his ears. Again. "What the hell is going on here, you! Answer me."

Fin Fang Foom sir," cried out one SHIELD operative running along, not wanting to miss the show. "He's grinding up against the Destiny Ascension."

"Fin Fang—wait, he can't do that: he's working here as a celebrity chef, that would get him fired! And besides, I mean, does he even have a dick!"

"Well, he is trying regardless sir," yelled the Agent running out the door. "He is trying hard."

"Wait," Pallin questioned. "Fin Fan Foom? As in the celebrity chef?"

There was a moment of pause as all of the inspectors at the scene of the crime looked at each other speechlessly. The silence was quickly broken a second later by a hardcore renegade cop knowing that justice had to be done.

"This one motions that the case might need to be postponed indefinitely till this one finishes its assault on a posterior of gargantuan proportions."

Bubin tried to keep his partner back so that they could find the proper procedure in dealing with giant monsters, but to no avail. Blasto was long gone and Bubin just couldn't catch up; his legs were too stubby.

"Badassfully: Damnit! Blasto, you big, stupid, nimble jellyfish!"

Then Blasto came back in through the wall, driving Bailey's cruiser.

"This one is borrowing your vehicle. This one promises to try not to damage the locomotive too much."

"No! Wait," Bailey roared at the already departing Blasto, who was making another hole in the roof. "I JUST GOT THAT!"

Long since used to events like this, Bubin raced out of the entrance at a breakneck pace. For an Elcor.

Watching with morbid amusement and horror, Bailey watched Bubin force his upper body into Pallin's sky car over the heated protests of the Executor, before flying off after Blasto with half of his massive frame still hanging out, muttering apologies along the way.

Pallin stood dejected as the Elcor Spectre relived him of his vehicle. Spectre statuses were the bane of his existence.

So there they stood, Human and Turian, bond by mutual vehicular misfortune of a Spectre variety. Turning to look at each other, trying to figure out where to go from here as the Destiny Ascension was slowly being devoured out somewhere in the horizon, they both simultaneously realized one important fact.

They were back in charge of the case.

"Hey," Bailey asked. "Wanna try solving this completely before they get back."

"Of cou—What are you people doing?" Pallin gasped, appalled at the behavior the SHIELD personnel, and Bailey especially.

"Executor," Bailey explained, while distributing bottles of liquor among his men. "There is a giant dragon molesting a Dreadnought out in the sky, our cars are gone, and the Citadel is very likely to be broken by the end of the night. Again. So, basically, what I'm trying to say, is that there is no way I am going to do this case sober."

Pallin opened his mouth the reprimand Bailey, but for the first time in his Career as an enforcer of the law, he realized the hopeless stupidity of the situation around him.

_Damn these humans, damn these Spectres, Damn this 'Fin Fang Foom', and Spirits damn my life._

"Agent," Pallin asked, unable to believe that he, of all people, is making this request. "Are there any more bottles left behind the counter."

Bailey smirked. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

**Bailey and Pallin**

**Drunk Cops!**

**Maybe...**

_Citadel Central, a few minutes later..._

The Destiny Ascension: the pride and might of the Citadel. This Dreadnought of once unrivaled size stood at the forefront as the flagship of the Citadel fleet. It was commonly regarded as the vanguard of victory, the bringer of devastation. Unmatched. Unrivaled. Unstoppable.

Well usually. It was scheduled for maintenance today, which meant that all mechanics beyond the engines were pretty much useless, which resulted in numerous complaints from the crew regarding their helplessness.

Of course all these matters where dismissed by Sparatus, who for all his support of warfare and preparation, "was not about to surrender to the insecurities of utter paranoia which fell into the STG's domain".

This always gave Captain Alye'esa, former Asari Commando and experienced tactician, a bad vibe. It's almost like something bad was meant to happen in the near future.

Like being victims to a sexually deviant reptile's furious attempts at ramming its groin into the bridge for example.

"Get it off," cried a traumatized crew member, covering her eyes.

"How are we supposed to do that?" replied another.

"Dispatch fighters," declared the Executive Officer of the ship.

"They are all being outfitted with new paint jobs!"

"Curses," grunted the Executive Officer. "Not again, how damn indecisive is Tevos on the ships colors? We already went through most the colors on the damn rainbow spectrum already!"

"Hey," screeched the Navigator sitting next to him. "Red decals: they look badass."

"Damn upgrades, they always manage to disadvantage us," the Executive Officer sighed, trying not to concede to the fact that red decals do in fact, look good.

Captain Alye'esa sighed. The schedule just had to pick today of all days to come in for maintenance. Why couldn't they be allowed to dock when there weren't any deviant lizards around?

"Hey wait," spoke one of the crew, noticing an interesting fact. "Is that… that's Fing Fang Foom!"

"What?" Captain Alye'esa jerked to full attention. "You mean the new cook they just got on Citadel's Purgatory?"

"Yep," a Turian service man confirmed, speaking in between the sporadic beats of giant underwear ramming into the bridge's outer shell. "Definitely him."

"Wow, I can't believe it; an actual celebrity is molesting our ship."

"Hell, more than that," declared the Executive Officer. "An actual Earthborn celebrity: the first even."

"Goddess," spoke the Navigator with much annoyance. "Didn't even go a year without a scandal."

"He does make some killer Varren spice soup though," Captain Alye'esa said.

'Ahs' and murmurs of mutual agreements erupted from the bridge while the banging on the outside went on.

Unbeknownst to them outside the Dreadnought, on the on the back of the Dragon, there clung a Turian mercenary locked in mortal combat with several members of the Grass Dragons Triad, all quite queasy from their involuntary flight on the back of said Dragon, who was having some… ailments.

"FIN FANG FOOM HAS A CRAMP," roared Fin Fang Foom jerking around even more furiously, unintentionally rubbing on the ship even more.

"Not helping," Garrus grumbled out while trying not to get impaled through the chest by the glowing Traid member he was currently wrestling with.

"FIN FANG FOOM'S LEFT THIGH HURTS!" cried Fin Fang Foom, unaware of the sword stuck in his leg.

"**You should have let me speak to the Triads," **declared Sovereign over Garrus's communicator.

Garrus kicked the glowing Triad in the throat and then shot him in the chest.

"Now is not the time Sov," Garrus hissed as he was beset upon by two more enemies.

"**You know I am right. And my title is not Sov."**

Garrus sighed and shook his head. He needed to have a chat about priorities with his dear friend Sovereign after this about its sassiness.

…

_Citadel Towers_

"What in the Goddess's embrace do you mean the Destiny Ascension is being molested?" roared an extremely uncharacteristically enraged Tevos.

"What do you think I mean, Tevos! There is literally a giant fire-breathing creature grinding against the Destiny Ascension!" growled Sparatus.

"Where did it come from?"

"How would I know? I didn't invite him on," retorted Sparatus.

"Goddess," Tevos hissed, motioning for her assistant to enhance the image of the culprit that has desecrated her beloved Dreadnought.

The resulting image came as quite a shock.

"Wait… is that?" began Tevos apprehensively.

"Fin Fang Foom," finished Sparatus with an equally disturbed expression.

Tevos gave Sparatus an odd look. "You watch Citadel's Purgatory as well?"

"Got a nephew on the show," Sparatus spoke caustically. "This deviant bastard cooked him off in three episodes."

"Oh," Tevos replied, surprised. "I'm sorry."

They gave in to the silence for a few seconds while watching the Dragon squirm and grind.

"He does make good Varren Spice Soup though," Sparatus painfully conceded.

"Absolutely."

Snapping back into problem at hand Sparatus noticed a smaller figure clinging onto the back of the Dragon, locked in a battle with several humans.

"It's Archangel! The Varren-spawn! I should have known he would be—Bastard!"

"Sparatus, you know him?" questioned Tevos, quite annoyed that she was somehow more out of the loop than Sparatus.

"Know him? I have a warrant out for his arrest! The bastard shot not-Colonius!" Sparatus shouted.

"Colonius? Not? Your assistant?"

"Apparently Colonius was a Skrull," spat Sparatus bitterly.

"What in the Goddess's name is a Skrull," Tevos questioned, now feeling even more ignorant.

"From what I gathered," Sparatus mused dispassionately. "A species of lying green Varren-spawn."

With that, Tevos decided to end that line of dialog.

"Well, this still doesn't solve our current issue with the Destiny Ascension." As if to add insult to injury, Tevos noticed that this Fin began dragging its nether regions more furiously against the Ascension.

It was at this moment that Councilor Valern decided to arrive.

"I am here, what is the issu—oh," Valern gasped.

Valern hated unknown variables. Here was one copulating with the Citadel's flagship.

This was troubling.

How the hell did any this happen?

...

_Meanwhile, Approaching Citadel Space, aboard SHIELD's capital Helicarrier, inside Shepard's dreams, while Conrad Verner is taking a dump…_

Whoever said that unconsiousness was a void was a damn liar

Looking around him Shepard saw thousands upon millions of different realities… or millions of thousands of realities that were the same. It was all rather confusing for him to describe.

He tried to walk, but couldn't since he had no legs. He tried to call out for help but couldn't because he had no mouth.

Retaining his calm, Shepard struggled to comprehend his predicament. Without motion, speech, or capability for action, he was a prisoner trapped in a viewing of an unexplainable scene that was slowly unfolding before him.

Then it dawned on him.

He could still see. And see he did.

Bending his will in ways that he could not describe, he forced himself into the visions unfolding before him.

The realities shattered and reformed until he caught glimpses of battles, individuals, even entire worlds forming for instants in time before they faded into the his past, but also possibly a distant future.

Then, things began to get really odd for the Agent.

He found himself gazing upon two reflections: one in odd armor that had an "N7" emboldened on it, and another with him in the most absurd spandex he had ever seen.

The only thing he could comprehend was both reflections looked exactly like him, but every other detail was entirely different.

Changes began to set in as he saw both versions of himself in battle, one against weird looking creatures designed from Alien flesh, and the other, against what seemed to be the Celestials.

It was when a beam fried one version himself, and the other was crushed under Celestial's foot that Shepard started properly panicking.

Trying desperately to escape from the scenes of himself dying, Shepard's willpower of vision went haywire, escaping from the scene and delving into utter chaos.

Millions of realities reappeared and dissipated on a moments notice; the madness unfolding before him had no structure, there was no place he could elude these visions.

That was, until he went into them.

It was an odd feeling for Shepard, penetrating through the barriers of uncertain realities or illusions. An odd sense of déjà vu kept shooting through his gut that he had to remind himself just wasn't there. Deeper, he went, into the spectacle that held him prisoner.

Until finally, he emerged from the other side, a bright light dawning upon him, and beyond it, the Citadel floated, broken in space.

And he caught a single glance of utter devastation, numerous Civilizations dying, with thousands of Celestials falling, broken from the heavens. Smoke engulfed the air and fire coated almost everything, but even that did not deny Shepard of his view of a single figure standing atop a mountain of corpses.

She stood weary, face covered in shadows with short red hair, and the same "N7" signed he previously saw on himself emboldened on her armor. He didn't get another glance before corpses she stood on began reaching up for her, while the Celestials around were impaled through their midriff with the odd spikes that Shepard saw on Eden Prime.

_"All your fault…All your fault…"_ came a distant whisper.

She was was held in place by the creatures, and struggle as she might, she couldn't get out.

She began to scream when he felt the metallic pole push through his back, and his screams grew louder when her flesh began to melt away, slowly replaced by metal and rotting flesh, until she burnt away completely, replaced only by a transparent figure looking up at the sky.

It was at that moment that she turned to look at him, and for an instant he felt all that she did, and knew that it was too much.

"All my fault… all my fault," she whispered.

Shepard wanted to leave, he had to, it hurt too much to stay

**_"All my fault…All your fault…"_**

Shepard had to leave!

The dreamscape decided to answer Shepard by forcing out of his current vision and back into the realm holding all his previous ones, which would be nicer if they weren't all breaking apart.

Thousands of possibly realities, visions, or figments within Shepard's mind shattered apart following the sentence as Shepard felt himself fall back into the only reality, still together, but beginning to fracture. As he fell closer, he saw his body lying comatose on a bed in the medical bay. Unable to stop his decent down, Shepard braced for an impact.

When he landed back into his physical form he was expect a slam. What he got was a boom.

An explosion of red, green, and blue erupted from him and washed over the room. A red glow enveloped the bed he was lying on, his gown simmered green, and his flashed a faint blue.

Barely conscious, Shepard turned to his side and tried to sit up. He then found himself flying through the air before colliding into a wall.

Shaking the stars out of his vision, Shepard sat up before noticing some most would consider rather strange: the bed he was in was standing up and bending over on its own.

It also somehow obtained abs, that were prominently displayed onto the sheets that were now part of it.

Shepard felt something intimate and familiar emanating from within the now seemingly possessed bed. It was almost like looking into a mirror.

This line of thought was getting quite silly even for Shepard.

"What the hell are you looking at!" a voice almost identical to Shepard's own snarled.

Shepard looked around to find where that came from, before he got whacked across the face.

"Wha—" Shepard gasped.

He got punched again; this time definitely noticing the bed was hitting him

"How?"

"I don't know," the Bed groaned. "But you brought me to life, and you're going to pay for it."

"Wait what? That makes no sense!" Shepard muttered on in disbelief, before the Bed reached out to hit him with its edge a third time.

This time however, the blow was deflected by a Gown. Namely, the one Shepard was currently wearing.

Leaping off Shepard's body, the Gown dropkicked the Bed backwards into a wall.

"Hurry," shouted the Gown somehow, also with eight buttons forming the place of abs and sounding much like Shepard himself. "Get up and run!"

"I didn't know I was so angry." Shepard spoke, shocked at what was unfolding.

"Go," bellowed Shepard's Gown, curling its sleeves into balls. "I'll hold him off."

"Wha—"

Shepard didn't have time to question his sanity before a brutal battle was joined before him.

Leaping through the air and snapping its bottom sides out like a spinning kick not unlike something that would be seen in a kung fu movie, the Bed spun its way towards the Gown.

Undaunted by the size of its adversary, the Gown simple went flat and slide under the strikes. Shepard was not so lucky as he took every single blow to the face.

Coming up behind the Bed, the Gown gripped onto the pillow, which seemed to be serving as the head to the form of the Bed, and repeated smacked it against the walls.

The Bed was enraged, spitting out feathers in substitution for actual blood, and with a might creak, slammed itself into another wall in the direction of the Gown.

A cry was heard from the Gown, very uncharacteristic of a piece of attire to make as the battle raged on.

"What the hell is going o-"

The medical officer didn't finish: he witnessed the scene unfolding before him. Catch in a three-way death grip was an almost naked Shepard, a Gown desperately wrapped around a Bed, which was currently beating Shepard with another bed.

Trying to rationalize what could have possibly led to these events unfolding the medical officer opened and closed his mouth several times, unable to respond even when hearing Shepard's desperate pleas for help and salvation.

Then, he did what most SHIELD operatives did when lost on how to proceed in horrifying situations: he closed the door, ignoring Shepard's cries for assistance, quickly walked back to his room, and used the event as an excuse to start re-watching Game of Thrones while waiting for the Avengers to deal with this menace of undiagnosed proportions.

While this was happening, Shepard was learning that somehow, with enough rage and willpower, the physical manifestation of his inner negativity channeled into a bed was still capable of performing a rear naked choke, even without arms.

He also realized that a hospital Gown made a remarkable tag team partner in the way it was controlling the Bed's upper torso movement.

Finding a moment's hesitation the Bed's grip, Shepard reached down and began turning a particularly loose bolt the lower regions of the Bed.

A terrible shout of agony erupted from out the Bed sheets.

Shepard felt pride swell within him: he had successfully granted a groin twist to the physical manifestation of his Id in the form of a bed.

However, the Bed was not to be defeated by mere crotch pains. Instead of pulling away from Shepard, it dove into him, knocking both of them over, and throwing them into another scramble on the floor.

This time though, the bed was prepared, quickly whacking Shepard over the head with one of its edges and rolling him over to expose his weak spot as well.

Grabbing a nearby heart monitor, it immediately began wailing on Shepard's gonads in retribution for the twisting of its special screw.

Seeing the absolute form of himself in peril, the Gown leaped up from its formerly incapacitated state and with a quick bend of its fabric, suplexed the Bed into the floor.

Undeterred, the Bed tackled the Gown into, and with a final mighty push, through the reinforced walls of the medical bay.

Shepard meanwhile, held his crotch in misery.

"Doctor," cried out the still agonized Shepard. "You gave me too much drugs!"

…

The Thessian Liar was not an easy card game to learn, and even harder to teach. Now combine those two facts with the concept of the prospective student being an odd amalgamation of Vengeance-demon and a Prothean, who also insisted on including his giant fire worm in the game as well.

Here, in the cargo bay, you have Nihlus and Saren wishing for a momentary distraction for the sake of their sanity.

"Turian," grunted Javik the ever pissed. "My Thresher Maw requires new cards!"

Nihlus and Saren looked at each other blankly.

"Which one of us," inquired Saren.

"It doesn't matter; one of you Turians will get my Maw some new cards,"

"This would be easier if you learned our names," suggested Nihlus.

"Easier for you, perhaps," growled Javik, shooting down Nihlus's attempts at diplomacy.

This continued on for a few minutes before a loud banging was heard from the upper decks of the ship. Being Vengeance, Javik knew that the only reasonable option was to order his death worm to make banging noises back.

Then, before the Thresher could commit to such an action, the roof of the cargo bay exploded.

Numerous shocked SHIELD agents, along with Nihlus, Saren, and their honored guests leaped up in preparation for a battle.

What they witness pretty much threw their preparation into a bucket of poop.

Tumbling down in a restless blur of collisions, Nihlus could make out what appeared to be a garment of clothing tussling with a Bed.

Jaws dropped as both Bed and Gown displayed stunning martial skill in their exchanges. The bed bent ninety degree into the air and camp down with one of its edges directly above the Gown.

The Gown responded by sliding right under the strike and striking the back of the Bed with its pant legs.

In the blink of an eye, the Bed somehow tied its own sheets around a shard of metal and began swinging it around in the air.

The Gown, see that shit has gotten real, snatched a belt off a nearby SHIELD initiate, who was far to scared to respond.

"You should have stayed out of my way," snarled the Bed as it sliced the through the air with its new weapon.

"You lack control. Restraint. You didn't even listen to what he hand to say," retorted the Gown, deflecting the cut with the metal end of the belt before using it to latch onto a nearby glass of water and launch it at the Bed.

"One of will stay," growled the Bed taking the wetness without blinking, because it can't.

"And one of us should go," finished the Gown, ready for what is to come.

And thus, a brutal battle was joined

"Wha—What do we do?" Nihlus questioned as Bed and Gown began tearing each other to ribbons.

"They both sound like that SHIELD agent... Shepard." Saren felt his mental state crumbling.

"I do not know, therefore we should throw them out of the airlock." Javik replied.

But no one was insane enough to try and restrain a brawling Bed and Gown. It was at this moment that Saren came up with an incredible idea.

"Let's just go back to playing the game and ignore their existence."

Everyone promptly did just that.

….

Shepard limped followed the trail of destruction left by his internalized discontent with life deeper into the inner workings of the Helicarrier, stopping only to question terrified personnel on which way the rampaging objects went.

He ran through shattered walls, doors, rooms, and past numerous shocked and jarred crew and followed the path.

All answers led to the cargo bay.

Dropping in through the roof, Shepard landed with a hard thud that drew absolutely no one's attention.

The cargo bay was wrecked, but thankfully no one was hurt.

Noticing that Saren, Nihlus, and the Rider were just sort of sitting around and playing card games.

"What happened? Where did they go?"

"Well," spoke Saren, out of shits to give. "For the first question, a few things did: we lost to the Thresher Maw in a game of cards," The Maw almost chuckled. "We got ambushed by whatever those things are, lost to the Maw again, and stopped caring in general." Saren took in a deep breath.

"Part two: they continued their brawl down that hallway, both trading savage hits. Then they tumbled further down that into that odd Transportal device that you humans have instead of an elevator. That's all I know, and frankly that's all I care to know."

"Thanks Saren," cried Shepard, running off after the metaphysical hims.

It didn't take long for him to catch up to the dueling objects through the Transportal.

Emerging on every level to check for damage, it wasn't long before Shepard located that most the commontion was coming from the Transportal just outside the bridge.

Down a long and large hall graced with destruction and confused Opertatives, Shepard found his inner components locked in a duel to the death with the badly slashed and bent Bed holding the tattered Gown down for a final blow.

Shepard denied it of this opportunity with a desperate tackle, not interested in knowing if his own Super-ego in Gown form could actually be killed.

Bursting in through the bridge with his bed stuck under him, Shepard extended an elbow at the Bed's hard frame.

The Bed then caught Shepard's elbow and hip threw the Agent right towards the man in charge: Nick Fury.

The Director turned to look at his agent a face full of surprise as the undressed Shepard charged straight into him, knocking both of them over the railings on the bridge.

Most of the crew were unprepared for the sight of almost fully nude Shepard tackling Fury over the railings. They were less ready for the Gown to limp out from the same hole the Shepard burst out of.

"Colonel!" Shepard cried out shaking the Colonel furiously.

For a second it seemed like the Commander was at a loss for words, but when he finally tried to articulate his knowledge, of his dream, and the new developments he gained, what came out of his mouth was, "The hospital bed was attacking me and we need to help my gown stop it!"

To further punctuate with statement, the ongoing brawl between said Bed and Gown, restarted into the Helicarrier bridge, with the gown currently with the upper hand, using another belt it managed to snatch off a nearby SHIELD agent to "choke" the upper portion of the bed while stating "I don't want to do this!" over and over.

The bed was more content to describe the Gown's mother with certain statements that put the identity of the Gown's father into questionable territory. It was all terribly amusing for the crew.

However, none of this shit was that important to Fury, considering that he had a problem right on top of him that he wanted to deal with.

"What the hell! Shepard, get the hell off of me. And put some goddamn pants on, I feel you poking my leg with your dick!"

Which were the first words the first words that Shepard's crew and Avengers heard when they walked in.

"What the f—"

Ashley never got to finish that sentence: the Bed bed-butted her right in the happy place.

**Extended Rambling**: It's going to get weirder. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear by now. What must be understood is that, in a Universe of walking embodiments of mass destruction, forgers of worlds, and even literal gods, Shepard stands apart here because 1. His fortune is crap, making him a trouble magnet, 2. His current abilities have a better chance of working against him than helping, and 3. He needs to figure out how to use these abilities to deal with the amount bullshit that's coming his way, much of which is hinted and will be further explain from within many dreams that he will be having. What is to come is a four-way brawl between Archangel, Fin Fang Foom, the Triads (who will be explained.), and Blasto/Bubin, while the Helicarrier comes in for a troubled landing in Citadel Bay 3 . God help the Council.

**Special Note**: I don't remember if I said this, and if I don't remember it probably means I was either too drunk, or I didn't say it at all. I think this time it's the latter. Anyway, I must thank all of you, dear readers, for actually reading and liking this piece. In some ways I am surprised that everyone did not collectively overdose on insanity, which means that I now have an excuse to pump more into this venture. Anyway, thanks for popping in for another dose of ridiculous, rambunctious madness, and remember that there is more to come.

Transportal: Sponsored by Future Industries, the Transportal is merely a window of transportation, allowing a door to open up in a select area with the specific "reflection" so that an individual may be able to step out. Attempts to do so during closing time will result in bisection, decapitation, and possibly loss of life.

Triads: They got in space too, quickly too. Likely after realizing that rent on the Citadel is much cheaper.

Garrus's Gun: Name will be revealed in time. Yes it has a name. Yes I know it can be overpowered. You want to know what else is overpowered: humans.

Red Decals: Adds 20% to Citadel fighters. Supposedly. Okay it doesn't, but its badass lookin' okay. Just… imagine it.

Citadel's Purgatory: Like any cooking show, except with Aliens and Dragons, so basically nothing like any cooking show.

Thessian Liar: A game created by Asari, meant for Salarians, played by Turians, and won by Thresher Maws.

**…**

**DAMAGE CONTROL: Broken Eden **

"We can't put the continents back together like that," spoke Henry

"Why the hell not?"

"Because whatever the Rider did to them, its reduced the connecty parts to melted slag."

"What connecting parts?"

"You know, bedrock, earth, stone. Stuff like that."

"Are you telling me that there is a giant pool of slag instead of a landmass right now.

"Well, it's more like an ocean."

"Goddamnit."

"What the hell are we supposed to do about that?"

"Hey, SHIELD still has a treaty with Atlantis right?"

"Yeah, but since the events of the Earth-Sea war, things have been tense."

"Hmm, you think we could convert things over from slag to water?"

"Maybe…"

…

_Is your family in look a new destination for a vacation?_

_Are you stressed and need a retreat that will relax and reinvigorate?_

_Then you need to come to Neo-Atlantis!_

_An aquatic paradise of unimaginable size and proportion._

_Perfect for all races (disclaimer captions: Except those that can't swim. We apologize to the Turians.)_

_And an exquisite retreat for all._

This was the advertisement playing on the screen of Prince Namor of Alantis, third of his name, and now royally pissed.

_Neo-Atlantis!_ Real Atlantis was still in existence!

"This is eel-shit," were the words that emerged out of Namor's mouth, aptly describing Human-Atlantian relations.


	7. Interlude: Pen-Omega

**Author's Swordfish Pen: **Don't own Mass Effect, Marvel, or a pirate hat. I wonder how much a van made of pirates would cost. Probably would smell pretty bad.

* * *

**Interlude: Pen-OMEGA!**

There is a tale of liberty, equality and freedom that came at the sacrifice of a team: a sacrifice so great, those who survived in its wake were forever scarred within, and left a entire world indebted beyond repayment.

This isn't the story of them. Or the guy they all got killed fighting. Or even the other guys they have scheduled brawls with every Saturday night when their mentor could find it within him to call up his old friend.

This was the story of the crew that left Earth early, and over time, becoming the reason why the Batarians avoid the upper quadrant of the Terminus sector like the plague.

…

The year was 2124, just after the Universal Regeneration: an event of unparalleled importance that was quickly forgotten by everyone like it never happened, despite leaving thousands of heroes dead (temporarily). Regardless, after this event, a new wave of hatred was stirred up against Mutantkind again for reasons too petty to reference, and thus the X-Men were once again forced to defend their own against a world that just didn't want them around, no matter what they did for it.

Well, while they were defending their own on Earth, a group of supposed Mutants, led by an escaped mental patient and self proclaimed messiah Randy Phallic, aka. Phallus, decided to leave the Earth.

Emerging one day out of nowhere claiming to be the bastard offspring of Norman Osborn's third clone and the Blob's fifth cousin, Randy Phallic leapt into the spotlight as he engaged both the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants at the same time.

Now, Randy was good at a few things, ranging from drawing penises, to fighting crime, and even architectural design should the building be required to be designed long, hard, and sturdy. He had a winning record of 14-13-1 against random thugs around Brooklyn and once claimed that he could take on a hundred people at once.

Asking him to prove his claims led to his first arrest by Brooklyn PD for assaulting around a hundred paraplegics in a hospital. His defense in court was to make an impassioned speech about how he didn't lie since "paraplegics were people too" and that "the judicial system was composed of a bunch of judgmental butt orifices." He managed to escape from his trial when the She Hulk threw Howard the Duck through multiple walls, and into Randy's courtroom in a phase of history known to the super powered community as "Law Wars."

With all these facts in mind, and putting Randy's capabilities into full perspective, he was savagely beaten unconscious within the first five minutes and spent most the fight being used as a club by Juggernaut to pat Wolverine over the head for the rest of the night.

He spent the next few months in a hospital before being reassigned to an asylum. He later managed to escape when Deadpool incited from a riot within during his brief stay. This incited the first Meta-Human Holding Acts, which was meant to revamp the prison system meant to hold supers.

What people didn't expect from this man, whose primary mode of making a living was to jump out of whatever bushes were nearest to random evildoers and then attacking them with protruding rods while roaring the word "Phallus" at the top of his lungs with each and every blow before reliving their unconscious bodies of clothing and wallets and zooming off into the night, Randy was also surprisingly good at making spaceships.

No one really knew why; as far his schooling showed, he hadn't even completed elementary science. He claimed it wasn't in the science, but the structure. As such, he had built numerous space faring vehicles; with the only drawback being none of them had steering or brakes. He developed a better crashing armor as a result.

One day when Randy was watching a television through a shop window, he saw mutants being pelted by random objects on screen by a mob of angry humans. When Randy saw the injustices that the Mutants had to face in society, and decided right then and there that he was actually a Mutant and needed to help his people escape from this cruel world.

Later, when an actual Mutant told him if he didn't actually have any powers then he couldn't possibly be a Mutant, Randy kicked him between the legs and called him a judgmental scumbag, before making an impassioned about how being a Mutant wasn't about if you could throw fire and get de-powered every time Magneto's daughter had a breakdown, but what was inside you.

Other Mutants really didn't see the point of breaking the poor delusional fool's heart and let him be: this didn't stop them for avoid him like the plague though.

Setting to work immediately on his rocket titled aptly as "Heaven's Penetrator", he built several buildings on the outside of his ship, including but not limited to, a Cantonese fish market that deals specifically in beef, a fake message parlor disguised as a brothel while actually being an uncover church, and even a barbershop. It was just a barbershop.

The problem was that he didn't realize that it took money and contracts to obtain the rights to buildings, and that spaceships were illegal within the city. Of course he didn't really care about this stuff; Randy believed that ownership worked with him beating the actual owners of the building and therefore all their houses belonged to him.

This led to several issues, not limited to the police being alerted to maniac paying building rights in cash, a mass exodus of potential clients when they realized the owner of the district was firstly really an owner and secondly a completely loony. So, it was on the first Monday of June of 1231, right when Brooklyn PD about storming the district to re-arrest Randy, that the complex blasted off with numerous unwilling tenants, many of whom were unaware of this development until they reached a certain altitude.

In the blink of an eye, over five hundred people (and thirty actual Mutants) were launched into space; their buildings shed their facades and emerged, long, protruding, and quite unfit for the vacuum of space.

The first problem that Randy encountered was breathing. When he built his ship, the primary objective was getting it off the ground, and his goals ended there. To say that those who came along with him were annoyed would be an understatement. Of all five hundred people and thirty mutants, all of them were in mutual agreement that they needed to beat Randy violently for this kidnapping.

So they did.

While Randy was moaning and rolling around after his savaging by raw beef from the fish market and mutant powers, the rest of the involuntary crew realized a few facts of that dictated their sealed fate. The first was that they were already in space, floating around on a dick-shaped ship that they didn't understand how it should work, and were pretty sure wouldn't work when it launched.

The second problem was the fact that it was getting slightly harder to breathe.

To say that this was a bit of an oversight would be quite accurate. By the time the Penetrator left Earth's atmosphere (surprisingly not exploding on the way), most of the members aboard were already falling unconscious. However, in a startling display of blatant fortune, the ship impaled itself through a cloaked Skrull scout ship and most of its members, which somehow allowed oxygen to flood in.

In a universe where giant green men manage to keep their pants from exploding from girth, this makes complete sense.

With this issue of actually living in space settled, Randy and the rest of the involuntary crew found themselves using the Skrull ship stuck around theirs as crew quarters. Randy quickly removed from the quarters when everyone remembered that this was his fault.

Now, the _Penetrator _was a decently sized ship, that looked quite similar to any other long rod-like ship with a green orb shaped Skrull ship stuck around it, but for all its size and offerings, there were a few things it lacked: food other than beef, a means of defense, turning ability, and internet.

Before the first day in space was over, the kidnapped crew were disgusted of beef, bored, and about to degenerate to anarchy. It was at this moment that Randy declared himself Captain in hopes of raising morale: who else to lead such rugged figures other than him. He was nearly lynched as a result.

Rationalizing that he might partially be at fault at that point, Randy tried offering apologies but sound were hard to make when there was a rope around one's neck.

A few minutes after Randy passed out from the strangulation was when the rest of the crew realized that the ship's controls was completely dominated by doodles, a toaster, and a Gameboy: only Randy could fly this ship.

This was the moment were Randy Phallic found his true calling in life, while his fellows were removing the rope from his neck, and with him deep with a dream. He found himself floating in a dark abyss with a rod in one hand and a hook on the other, and with a voice telling him to seek fame and fortune across the stars.

Randy decided that he was going to be a pirate. The rest of the crew decided that they needed to choke him again.

By the time he awoke for the second time, he immediately began throwing out orders at the men aboard, most of who ignored him, but some really didn't understand; but Cantonese immigrants don't need to speak English to realize their kidnapper was insane. They never really bothered to learn how to speak English as a result, stating Randy's existence as the reason why.

When Randy realized that no one on the ship had pirating experience, he knew what he had to do: he asked if anyone on the _Penetrator _was from Somalia. This led to the first ship riots when he decided anyone not white could fill the role.

Appeasing his involuntary crew with claims of jesting and possibilities of treasure in the great unknown, the members aboard the ship calmed down, if only so that they could convince this fool into bringing them back to Earth.

This would not happen. Unbeknownst to them, the cruel gods of the 2341th universe of the Marvel series demanded more chaos for their audience.

So, like any other event, a problem was started, and the Earth was promptly swallowed right in front of them by a sentient black hole, called the Abyss, in an attempt to save Earth from a evil version of himself. The Black Hole was later destroyed when it was force fed the space gem. Thousands mourned his loss.

Despair set in as their planet and home faded and Randy cursed the One-All-Above for doing this to them. Their curses were answered with a theoritical cosmic retcon that threw them into a random sector of the Universe.

When they emerged from the other side, they found themselves floating through an entirely separate galaxy. Or at least they would have if Randy actually had added in a navigation screen instead of a piece of paper with the word "spac mape" stuck to the ships primary controls.

In hindsight, he really should have added a turn function to the ship, as they crew soon discovered to their horror that they were about to run into another alien vessel.

The crew of Batarian slave ship _Dominance _were experiencing one of their most fruitful catches yet: a hundred heads of multiple races. With such fortune putting them in such high spirits, the Batarians decided they were about to have a feast on the bridge, leaving most of their stations unmanned; simultaneously using this opportunity to discipline the "recruits" for the Hegemony.

It was a sickening sight, of Batarians abusing their captives while stuffing their faces full of sustenance. A few minutes into the celebration and the Captain aboard rose up to speak. Grakk Harak was a veteran of the Hegemonic navy, and one of its best pirates, and he, like many times before, saw an opportunity to remind his crew of how great he was on this auspicious occasion.

Grakk took a breath, opened his mouth, and was promptly impaled from behind by the _Penetrator_ ramming through their ship.

Upon this day, the startled Batarian slavers were expecting a moment filled with food and slaves. What they quickly received was a swift rod to the face accompanied by the furious battle cry of "phallus in aternum". However, thanks to Randy's rash decision to charge out the docking doors when the others weren't completely out yet, too many humans surged out at the same time and they found themselves all stuck in the opening they created.

The Batarians starred in disbelief for a second before scrambling for their weapons. They were all promptly shot.

Looking to the corner of the room was an Asari with a disabled slave band her feet and a terrible blue glow to her body, holding a shotgun far too large for her size along with a scowl that didn't fit her complexion.

Aria T'Loak was a burned Asari Commando who knew too much to be considered an asset anymore. The team that was sent after her never reported back from their mission, but they did manage to leave her stranded float in space among the debris of her ship until the Batarians found her.

The surrounding slaves watched on in awe and terror at their unexpected liberators, each one brandishing an odd weapon or ability that left logic far behind, and the one Asari that actually did all the work.

Turning to the former captives, Randy summoned up his charisma and announced that they were safe now. Without a translator, the non-humans couldn't understand a damn word. Luckily for him, Aria who saved them all, understood the tongue of "absolute idiot", offered to help translate through mind-melding: one mistake that she never made again.

Upon completion, the first proper words spoken between Asari and Humanity were "You pervert!" followed by a swift kick to Randy's crown jewels. She then locked herself away in the ships cargo bay for a week, muttering hateful things about all things related to penis.

With the establishment that melding helps translation, most of the Asari were established as intermediaries of language between the humans and the other races, collaboration was achieved: the first order of business was to deal with the surviving Batarian slavers.

Randy and the former slave argued over what they should do to the Batarian captives while the rest of the _Penetrators _looted the cruiser for everything it had. Randy wanted to toss the Batarians into the ships cargo bay and each given raw beef to kill each other with, going by the logic of "if they don't get killed, then they won't die, therefore we don't need to do anything".

The slaves just wanted to jettison out of the airlock. Randy wanted to hold a debate and vote to decide that matter. The slaves just ejected their captors anyway.

The sole survivor of this trail was a Batarian engineer named Bray, who through his decency towards the former slaves was spared in return. This didn't stop them from preventing Randy from quickly stapling badly painted feathers onto his body and demanded that he repeat everything they said without fail. He was soon renamed "Parrot", much to the confusion of all non-humans aboard.

Soon, the crew began stripping the Batarian cruiser in its entirety, ripping off chunks of metal for makeshift armor, pulling off its guns to use as propulsion, unaware that they didn't work that way. The biggest modification they made to their own ship however, was when the group started a Union to petition the lack of lights on the ship, causing members to constantly bash their shins against random implements lying around on the floor. This led to the dismantling of the FTL core from the Batarian cruiser to be placed in the _Penetrator _as a makeshift lamp.

This, for quite obvious reasons terrified all members of the crew who lived with an understanding of basic physics and understanding that cancer can kill.

A few days later, some members woke up with glowing blue and floating while others got cancer. This repeated every night since, with the impending demise of the crew kept at bay only by the efforts of a singular healer who seemed to have the uncanny ability to literally suck cancer out of people.

When the rest of the races began displaying similar symptoms of Biotically induced cancer, Randy declared his healer overworked, much to the man's chargin, and instituted Randycare, which dictated the trade of goods for services of healing.

The problem was, that the other species were slaves, and this point had nothing to trade. If Randy's leadership was seen as being political, his approval would now be invading Mephisto's realm without any loss in velocity.

By the end of the second month in space, pretty much everyone aboard the ship was glowing blue. This caused a Union to arise, their agenda being that they preferred the color red. Despite being a stupid debate in the eyes of the aliens, the humans fought over it anyway and permanently flooded the Skrull portion of the ship. It was later used as a swimming pool.

Till this day there is still a fierce tension between self-proclaimed reds and blues on the _Penetrator_.

The second trial that Randy and the crew of the Penetrator had to face was the variety of food: more specifically, the absence thereof: food storage that they looted from Batarians found its way out of the airlock in a dispute between a fake Italian cook and a French Gourmet that was being mind controlled by a rat.

They too were ejected as a result.

Now Randy got a bit lucky in this department as he had someone managed to get an actual Mutant whose abilities included the materialization of food. Unfortunately, the only thing he could project out of his body was salad, so everyone had to starve.

By this point in time, all freed Quarians began to turn to religion and prayer from starvation and hunger. Still thinking that their suited allies were just robots, the humans tried feeding them everything from motor oil to A-4 batteries to no avail. It was only when Aria lost her nerve and began explaining that they were actually living beings that the humans understood.

This didn't solve anything, as the Quarians didn't eat human bullshit. Randy replied stating "We don't have the luxury to be vegetarians right now." He was promptly voted out of office by everyone ever.

Following this quickly, Aria was voted in as "Supreme Pirate Queen over Randy forever in all realities and timelines", while Randy was demoted to being a table in the living room. He was moved back into the bridge when they remembered that only the idiot that built the ship could fly it.

Randy tried to refuse and start a revolt, but Aria persuaded him to stop revolting with the help of "Parrot", with the argument that Randy might lose his balls from stress and other factors related to rebellion. Randy promptly gave up and continued plotting his return to office in private.

With a table that could steer the ship, the power of bullshit provided by humans, the most feathery Batarian as an assistant, and a burning hatred for slavers along with her her superiors, Aria decided that she would become the scourge of raiders and empires alike.

Over the course of the next few years, the _Penetrator _conducted even more raids on Batarians, Council explorers, and even Kree scouts on rare occasions; each time increasing the mass of the _Penetrator, _impaling more parts onto it to create some kind of super ship— a space hulk.

It was on New Years Eve of 2134 that the _Penetrator_ found itself face to face with the latest Herald of Galactus locked in a brawl with the Future Foundation over the time gem.

The Herald, often referred to as the last Battlemaster in most reports and Urdnot the Cosmic in popular media, was a bit of a badass. The supposed brawl was going terribly for the Future Foundation, even as a united force barely able to keep the time gem out of his reach.

Even with the support of powerful members such as Locust, the She-Hulk, and even the presence of the Silver Surfer as support, the seven-hero team was beaten brutally with exploding asteroids and the Power Cosmic channeled through a rather large shotgun.

This was one of most decisive losses the Future Foundation ever suffered, and one of the first encounters between Krogan and Human: it set the tone for future encounters in which the primary method of negotiation was brawling.

It was the timely, and quite unwilling intervention of the _Penetrator_ that was heading right towards the battle, during which Aria viciously strangled Randy for the millionth time for not making the Penetrator capable of turning while Parrot decided that he was going to become an alcoholic just as the ship ran headfirst into the Herald, who was far to preoccupied with feeding the Surfer his board.

A stunning collision between Herald, Heroes, and a Massive ship of uncanny speed shone for a single immortal moment across time, and then nothingness returned, but without the _Penetrator_\- or the gem.

By the time the displacement wore off, the Battlemaster to turn towards the Future Foundation in question. Most of the members responded by shrugging their shoulders before he started shooting at them again. This was later resolved when the She Hulk beat him in a Ryncol drinking showdown.

Across the Galaxy, twenty years into the future, there suddenly appeared a massive ship forged out of random junk slapped together. Where there were once the words _Penetrator_ painted, there now was a Greek symbol foreign to all but the humans, and one certain Asari.

Omega.

So there they wait, collecting more stray members and loot, watching from a city of junk and gold alike, casting its gaze across the stars in a grand plan to take the Hegemony by storm. Within its walls of trash and steel, a lone Asari sits, with her ship being piloted by a man-table, making plots of his own. Aria held up the shining gem of time, and her savage grin was reflected back into her own eyes through it: she would be the Queen of the Universe.

She wants it all, and she wants it now. So thus, joy spread across Omega, not because their might grew ever larger, but because they finally found the signal to Netflix again.

_Theoretical Recollections of Space History as Seen through the Eyes of Agamando by Dr. Conrad Verner_

_Master of Sorcery and Space Stuff_

**Author's Phallus-Speak: **Batarian raiders have company now, just not the good kind. There is something about murdering other people that renders them unable to hold a conversation, no one is quite sure why; it is quite rude as well. Past this point, there will be a return to the Citadel, a race to retrieve Shepard's gown, and multiple scenes of the Council drinking themselves to death with Aria catching up on House of Cards in the meantime. Oh, and pirates too.

* * *

_Conrad Verner will return soon with... THE SPACE DEFENDERS_


	8. Trouble on the Citadel Issue 3

**Author's Face-Movement**: My sincerest apologies for not updating sooner but tis hard to update without a computer or wireless, as I found myself in a wilderness full of bugs and flying rats. However, this experience of running away from Wasps have taught me to appreciate moments of sanctuary in typing, and even though my mortal danger has yet to pass, with accursed spiders creeping in every corner, I have taken the opportunity to begin again, using the agony of my bites to stay away long into the night, typing away...

**Trouble On the Citadel #3: **

**What the Hell Happened Last Night ****_or _****How the Citadel Council Began to Develop Drinking Problems**

The Citadel Tower was a mess, but it certainly looked better than the Presidium. It seemed that in a five kilometer radius of the Tower, destruction and ruin were the primary decorators of the street. Groaning and dying Hand Ninjas, Mercenaries, Skrull spies, and other manner of criminal scum littered the streets. Three giant robots lay motionless around the devastated area, one with a giant sword lodged into its groin, and in the sky, there floated a Reaper with the Destiny Ascension in its grasp, irritably waiting for its partner to leave exit the Council Chambers. It was telling that the few buildings that were still standing in the area had Dragon-shaped holes punched through them.

The hard question wasn't how so much was destroyed when humans were involved, but how no one died in the ensuing mess.

Well, beyond all the violently massacred mercenaries, ninjas, and criminals. Oh, and Udina, who unfortunately suffocated when a squirrel made of pure energy lodged itself in his throat. Yeah, it was one of those days.

So, it was on the morning after these events unfolded that parties involved gathered in the Council Chambers to discuss just what had transpired, and in the middle of this room sat three Councilors, far past the point of fury, glaring at a varied group of individuals who were trying not to look guilty.

A dusty and battered Archangel stood handcuffed to a Quarian who was chained to a Dragon via magnetic lock to her drone that was in the Dragon's stomach. Beside them, Spectres Blasto and Bubin were applying another set of handcuffs to a bed that had a Gown stabbed through it. Agent Shepard stood next to the rest of his team, along Nihlus and Saren trying not to look ashamed. Most of the other SHIELD personnel along with most of the Avengers stood by trying to find a way to dislodge the head of Fury's Helicarrier from the side of the Tower. Finally, Conrad Verner was floating above everyone, with a wispy link of magic connected to Shepard's head that sometimes caused a portal to open from atop Shepard to either drop a horrible monster, that would be swiftly killed, or a large chunk of cheese, which would be swiftly ignored.

In short, the Council were starring at too much bullshit for them to handle.

"Alright," started Tevos, using every ounce of her considerable willpower not to lose her nerve. "Would anyone like to explain to me how we all got into this situation, and what we should do to rectify it."

"Rectify it?" Sparatus growled indignantly. "Rectify what, the amount destroyed in the wrecking of the Presidium? The fact that the Flagship of the Council was molested live on television by a well known celebrity? Or the fact that our own Spectres have fallen victim to the insanity that is the humans, which resulted them in arresting a bed!"

"Hey screw you, dick," the Bed-ass shouted, rattling the hand cuffs that were stuck in its sheets. "It's not like I asked to come to life."

"Bed, calm down," the Para-gown pleaded. "Your anger got me lodged in here in the first place."

"YOU THINK I WANTED TO BE PENETRATED BY YOU!"

Blasto quickly utilized violence on the bed and gown to make them shut up.

Moving past the fact a bed just mouthed off to him, Sparatus moved on to the next individual that held drew the most contempt from him: Archangel.

"So, 'Archangel'," Sparatus all but growled at the yawning Vigilante. "Would you care to explain how you destroyed the residential district of the Presidium."

"Not really," answered Garrus.

"That wasn't a request!"

"Is it an option?" Garrus sardonically enjoying how Sparatus was losing his nerve.

"You listen here you barefaced bastard," Sparatus hissed. "You either tell me now or I will have you locked into the darkest cell in the most remote galaxy and left to ro-"

"I-it wasn't his fault," the Quarian next to Garrus broke her silence. "He did it to help me, while I was trying to help all of you."

Sparatus narrowed his eyes at the Quarian. "Who are you? Help us? And what could you possibly say that would make me-"

"I am Tali'Zorah nar Rayya," she answered. "And I would be dead if it weren't for Garrus's help." She didn't quite catch the smile on Garrus's face.

"That's all nice and good but w-" Sparatus said before being interrupted again.

"He also helped me stop an attempt on your lives."

Sparatus and the rest of the Councilors were struck silent; this was unexpected.

"If anyone else has any other shocking news," Valern said. "It would be helpful to let us know now, while the shock is still present to lessen the impact."

Everyone looked to each other with a hint of unease and spoke at the exact same time.

"I ate the Prothean Beacon," Shepard admitted.

"We found an actual Prothean," Nihlus said, trying to make the situation better.

"He is insane and on fire. Also rides a Thresher Maw that is equally flammable." Saren said, making things worse.

"The front half of the Helicarrier is completely stuck in the Tower," Fury admitted. "We don't know where the back is."

"There is a slight chance that everyone will poop cheese for the next month," Conrad announced. "I might have miscast a spell when the Helicarrier crashed."

"Badassfully: The Destiny Ascension is missing as well," Bubin tried to whisper.

Sparatus's legs gave out from under him, and he collapsed into the arms of the his fellow Councilors.

Just what the hell had happened last night?

…

_Several Hours ago, in the Alleyways of the Wards, approaching the markets…_

She thought she had lost them when she caused that food truck to block off the route behind her. She thought that she lost them when she turned into the alleys and lit the path behind her ablaze. She thought she lost them when she found that cardboard box to hide in for a while.

The arrows and odd pellets flying through the air told her that she didn't lose them hard enough each and every time.

Another projectile zipped by her head, causing her to duck to the left. Her lungs felt like they were on fire as she pushed herself to run further. She couldn't keep this up for too much longer and they knew it, her endurance was not going to last forever: she was going to have to fight.

Taking a few more steps before she activated her Omni-tool and threw up Shield to cover her sudden turn, Tali unfolded her shotgun and opened fire. The accelerated rounds struck true and impacted hard on the chest of one of her pursuers, with a spray of red she could see through him. Her elation did not last as the wound disappeared before her eyes, flesh mending itself at an impossible rate, even for a Krogan.

His eyes flashed red and he raised his sword, the steel showing her a reflection of herself, while his red armor flapped like a Toad's tongue to the blowing of the night's wind, before he shattered her shield with a casual slash.

Tali gulped before turning to run again.

Chasing her down into a diverging path, the ninja caught up to her drew his sword. In an instant he struck, but not alone, his companions leapt out of the shadows that covered them, from above, the sides, and even behind. Tali was caught in the middle.

And as their blades entered her body, the hologram dissolved, and one of his fellow ninja's heads exploded as a shotgun went off from behind him.

It quickly became clear that their prey was not the helpless victim that they were led to believe; she had successfully deceived them.

Attacking quickly, she fired two shots at the ninja nearest to her, not at the chest or the head, but the arms, removing his sword arm before tackling him to the ground and slamming a frost mine into his chest before leaping off and running further into the alleyways.

As his companions rushed forward to eliminate the Quarian, the mine went off, freezing the ground and their fellow ninja solid, causing them to lose their balance and fall atop his frozen frame, shattering him utterly, and killing him completely.

Not even bothering to mourn their fallen fellow, they redoubled their efforts at perusing Tali and claiming her head. In a few moments, they caught up to her again, and the struggle began anew.

Tali deployed another frost mine on the floor, hoping to at least delay them a little while longer, but as the mine went off and she turned around, she witnessed the Hand ninjas running across the walls to evade the frozen floor.

In an instant, one leapt off the wall and slammed into her, knocking the shotgun from her hands, and leaving her defenseless. Or so he thought.

Yanking her blade out of from the back of her boot, she sliced the ninja's eyes out, rendering him useless for an instant before kicking him off and incinerating him with a slash her flaming Omni-blade. The flailing ninja ran off screaming for a few steps before slipping on ice and cracking his head against a wall.

However, before she even got a moment to catch her breath, she felt a hard blow strike her in the shoulder sending her sprawling onto the ground, and then the unmistakable feeling of a boot press down on her chest as sword was reflected in her visor.

The one that stood over her was enough to finish the job, but there were still several more behind him, watching him complete the kill. Turning her head back away from her impending, she could still feel the red in their eyes follow her and felt hope fade away. There was no escape, not even if... wait...

_Please be here on time, _Tali prayed as her assassin raised his swords over her, death drawing ever closer.

It was.

Screaming out of the sky like an eagle without wings, feathers, or generally bird like features, a while blur slammed into the men standing over her in quick succession, like some kind of badass pinball that was capable of acting like a cruise missile. Then with a flash of red it stopped dead in the air, ignoring inertia and the laws of physics. Its next trick was to invalidate the laws of expectation as this floating white orb opened up its eye and fired a blue beam that froze its creator's enemies solid before unleashing a blast of concussive force and shattering all of them into bits.

"Chiktikka!" Tali cried out in relief, leaping to hug the floating orb that made several accusatory beeps to respond to its creator's affections. "What took you so long. It shouldn't be that hard to navigate through the markets!"

A pause and several more beeps caused Tali to sigh.

"Apple maps was the cheapest function to download," Tali admitted begrudgingly. "And I thought the humans would be capable of developing decent navigation technology."

Chiktikka held a long beep in the form of a sigh

A few hard footsteps interrupted their argument, and told Tali that her hunters were not yet through. Swallowing the surge of fear climbing up her throat, she tapped her Omni-tool and began scanning her surrounding area for usable materials. She couldn't outrun them, so she wouldn't.

Moments later, more Hand ninjas arrived with swords drawn, trying to track down where the Quarian had went, and find out what had happened to their fellow warriors.

As one ninja went for examine the shards of broken ice and the odd frozen patched in an otherwise normal alleyway, there was a stark realization for them that perhaps they weren't hunting a helpless victim but a survivor.

A flash of light caught their intention as they proceeded further down the alleyways, following the flashes of light to locate their quarry. As they approached from the rooftops and the alleys alike, they found her, crouched near a pile of trash seemingly digging at something.

It did not matter to the Hand.

All the of them launched their attack as one, each one slashing out at where she was, stabbing down at her head and chest.

Each and every strike phased right through her. Looking down, the ninjas found a tiny blue object projecting an image, a hologram, of the Quarian. They had been deceived.

A loud ignition made them look up to the sky as they witnessed the Quarian taking flight using a makeshift jetpack, with an odd white orb in its center seemingly powering it. What they noticed next was flash of orange from her Omni-tool, followed by a quick beep.

The ninjas looked down at what was a tiny blue hologram projector, now orange, and then red. Their eyes widening, they realized two things in that instant, the first was that it wasn't just a hologram project, but also a bomb. The second was that the Quarian wasn't merely a survivor.

She was an Engineer.

As a fireball erupted out of the alleyways, Tali listened to Chiktikka beep several times before she smiled to herself. "You're right: they are bosh'tets."

Taking a moment to catch her breath, Tali relaxed for a few moments, and then refocused. The night wasn't over, and they weren't going to stop just because she killed a few dozen of their men. She needed to get protection if she wanted to continue living, and she had just the bit of information to trade for her safety.

Understanding what she had to do, Tali began to make her way towards the nearest C-Sec station in hopes of making her trade. At least, that was her plan before she felt the impact.

Looking behind her, she saw the dissolving energy blade stuck in her ramshackle jetpack, and the one that threw it. His Chrome armor, if you could call it that, shone brilliantly in the pale moonlight as he pointed his sword at her as if issuing a challenge.

As Tali began recalibrating the jetpack in hopes of surviving her decent, she couldn't help but feel a shiver go down her back.

The humans truly had no sense of fashion.

"Hunt her down," ordered the Chrome Ronin, voice almost a whisper, yet heard by his subordinates like he had been shouting. As his ninjas dashed out into the night, he watched the Quarian slowly descend into the distant section of the Wards.

…

Walking out from Chora's Den whistling, Garrus congratulated himself on a job well done. A simple job granted, but still, it's the little thing that counts. As he walked away from the scene of his crime towards his stolen sky cruiser, he breathed in the night air and signaled Sovereign to prepare for departure.

He was calling it a day.

Of course, there was still the bit of Garrus that was unsatisfied; Fist was not much of an opponent, leaving Garrus's desire for battle left unfulfilled. Shrugging to himself, Garrus counted his blessings and called it a day.

Which was when a Quarian dropped in on him. Literally.

Though she didn't fall from very high up, and she wasn't very heavy, but the fact that she came out of nowhere and caught him unprepared sent both sprawling to the ground.

Garrus could tell that the Quarian was a female from how her chest pressed on him. Her Enviro-suit had several scorches and slashes across it, but seemed pretty standard beyond the purple lights and visor color, in fact, beyond the makeshift jetpack on her back, she seemed like a normal Quarian. Garrus knew better; he knew trouble and it was certainly following this girl.

He liked trouble.

Shaking her head, she tilted her head upwards to see just what she had run into, before meeting Garrus's eyes. Shock set in and she froze as embarrassment flooded her.

"Oh Keelah, I-I am so sorry," Tali babbled much to Garrus's amusement. "I didn't mean-I was just trying to—Sorry."

"Relax," Garrus said, calming her. "Take a breath."

Tali did just that.

"Alright," Garrus continued. "Qua—actually, what is your name."

"…Tali."

"Alright Tali, I'm Garrus. Can we have this conversation while we are standing."

Tali leapt up off his chest and detached the jetpack from her shoulders. With a pop, her drone removed itself from the other components of the jetpack to resume floating next to Garrus before scanning him.

Offering her hand out to Garrus, he accepted as she pulled him up and dusted him off, much to his continued bemusement.

"You didn't need to do that." Garrus said.

"I'm the one who knocked you over," Tali squeaked.

"My fault for not paying attention," Garrus joked. "Quarian girls falling out of the sky are hard to miss."

Tali didn't know how to respond to that. Shaking her confusion off, she remembered that she was trying to get away from the Hand.

"I-I'm sorry," Tali said frantically. "You should leave. I'm not safe to be arou-."

A thud landed behind her. She stopped speaking, it was too late. They were there. The ninjas, were coming at her from off the tops of distant buildings, from around alleys, even out of nearby buildings, completely surrounding them. Far too many to fight.

Tali's heart dropped. This was it. No way out.

"I'm so sorry I got you involved," Tali said regretfully to Garrus before being struck silent by the feral grin he was sprouting.

"Why," Garrus asked as he unfolded his like a child opening a present. "You just made my night interesting."

It was when she saw the look on his face, and the absolute readiness he held for the oncoming battle, Tali felt like she just might survive with the help of this strange Turian. Tali unfolded her shotgun as Chiktikka opened its core to reveal an eye of pure red that would scorch its creator's foes to the bone.

The Hand drew their blades and began their approach. Fingers on triggers tightened, and the air grew tense, much like an interaction between several spies before one farted, and the others were forced to identify if it there were toxins in that fart or if its merely a simple slip up.

"Stop," came a voice, dispelling the metaphorical possibly toxic fart in the air away like the window being opened.

All eyes turn to look upon the Chrome Ronin, with his cloak fluttering and armor shining to an abnormal degree, he approached scene with purposeful strides. His eyes met the Turian's and his grip on his blade grew tighter.

"Though I despise all you Aliens," the Ronin spoke with calm voice that did nothing to mask his disgust for Garrus. "I am a professional. Surrender the Quarian, and I will allow you to live."

Garrus paused for a moment, before turning to Tali. "Is this guy serious?"

Before Tali could properly respond, the Chrome Ronin answered firmly. "Beyond a shadow of doubt."

"Then why the hell are you dressed like that," Garrus pondered. "In fact, why are any of you dressed like that."

"Keelah," Tali let out sigh of agreement. "I know, right? It's just so...silly."

The Hand ninjas looked down at their attire, and then to each other for reaffirmation and support of their organizations fashion choices, each one striking a new pose afterwards as if to stand by their choice. The Chrome Ronin stood still for a moment trying to think of a proper rebuttal.

"Fear and strength," said the Chrome Ronin clenching his fist at the moon. "Are associated with the color red, and as such, we, are the epitome of these qu—"

"Then why the hell are you Chrome?" Garrus questioned. "Just what qualities am I supposed to associate with you? Hunger? Because you resemble my refrigerator with that armor."

Several members of the Hand gasped in shock as verbal shots were fired at the Chrome Ronin, who was always quite passionate about how he was dressed.

"You son of a bitch," the Chrome Ronin hissed. "You know nothing about human fashion."

"I know that exposing your skin and wearing robes isn't a sane combat standard," Garrus said sardonically. "I mean, what's with you humans? Half you guys wear stupid robes when I know there are actual suits of impenetrable design available? Perhaps I should be happy that your dress code isn't naked!"

"Silence," the Chrome Ronin bellowed like the Blob's stomach after too much Thai food. "We haven't been naked since that one time in the 2080s! Never again shall a nudist lead the Hand." finished the Ronin with a whisper on his lips as the rest of the Hand closed their eyes for a moment to will away the humiliation.

Garrus snorted at being proven right. "I just can't understand you Humans. I know that some of you have sense, like that Iron Lady, who wears a weapon of mass destruction around her."

"How is my armor any less impressive than hers," the Chrome Ronin responded indignantly thrusting his chest outwards towards Garrus.

"There is a big difference between her and you, is that she is wearing actual armor on her body," Garrus said. "And you're just wearing a bunch of Chrome chunks."

"You are obviously near-sighted," bellowed the Chrome Ronin pointing the many intricate details to his armor, and patting down his pockets. "Otherwise, you would have noticed the many details of my armor's sleek design. My armor is like if Prada and Starktech made sweet love before Parker Industries joined in to give the child some character."

"You're obviously stupid to consider that sleek," Garrus shot back.

Audible gasps filled the air again, and the Chrome Ronin's eye narrowed. "Are you calling my chil-armor retarded!"

"No. Retardation is a mental illness. Your armor doesn't deserve that justification," Garrus responed.

"You shall die!" the Ronin growled while readjusting his codpiece, which had been jiggled sideways during the pissing contest.

You bosh'tets are insane," Tali whimpered. Chiktikka beeped in agreement. "All of you."

"You rue the day that you crossed the Hand," the Chrome Ronin cried, drawing his blade out of his jewel encrusted scabbard entirely. "And more than that, you will regret insulting our costumes!"

Tali's mouth opened and despite her best efforts, a groan escaped. The Hand Ninjas narrowed their eyes and clenched their blades while the Chrome Ronin scowled underneath his mask.

"Hey, the Avengers!" Garrus cried out, pointing behind them.

"You lie," the Chrome Ronin declared. "Don't look behind!"

But his plea to his brothers was in vain; years of violent beatings received at the hands of various teams had left the the collective members of the Hand more paranoid than SHIELD was when the Skull inevitably invade every other October.

"You need better men," By the time he finished that sentence, Garrus had already fired over twelve shots that struck true on twelve different ninjas. Taken by surprise by the sheer speed of their adversary, several more fell before anyone else could react.

Not a moment after, Tali launched an explosive mine towards the center of the Hand who were approaching her from atop from her left, before detonating it prematurely in their faces with her shotgun. Burn cloth and tore flesh splattered across the air, decorating the walls with charred crimson pieces.

Undeterred by the fate of their brothers, the rest of the Hand advanced without hesitation, a few throwing out smoke to cover their advance. Unfortunately, a drone doesn't see like organics do.

Defending its creator, Chiktikka began scanning past the smoke and fired a plasma missile into the midst of several hand ninjas, outright vaporizing a few of them before unleashing an ice ray on the few regenerators who managed to survive the explosion.

Shattering the ninjas with a few well placed shots from her shotgun, Tali could see Garrus firing faster than her eyes could keep up with as he imploded all that stood before him, while her drone deployed a force field to block off another angle of assault from the Hand.

Then out from the smoke, a blade shining blazing white pieced through the barrier of the unseen as Chrome Ronin strode into battle. Tali wasted no time in firing a shot at his head, which was rendered futile by him in a single sweep of his blade, deflecting the shot out of the air.

"Your efforts are futile," spoke the Chrome Ronin as even more Hand ninjas fell out of the empty sky to assist their brethren. "What I wield is a Chi-forged blade. Your gun's attacks, akin to a Salarian trying to mate with a Krogan, have no chance of penetration."

Several ninjas felt their eyebrows rise at that statement.

"With this, I bring my blade down upo—"

The Chrome Ronin twitched as Tali sent a bolt of electricity into his sword through her Omni-tool.

"Chi, not chi," Tali retorted. "It's still made of metal."

This earned her the Chrome Ronin's undivided hatred, and for this humiliation, his eyes narrowed with rage as he began his approach towards the troublesome Quarian.

"Brothers," the Chrome Ronin said. "You can take the Turian. This one is mine."

"Not creepy at all," Tali muttered to herself.

Obeying his command in an instant, the Hand focused all their efforts on Garrus, ignoring the shots coming at them from Tali altogether despite how much damage she might do.

This sentiment was returned by the Chrome Ronin was simply dodged every shot from Garrus or Chiktikka while focusing solely on Tali. Unrelenting and full of fury, he slashed at Tali while still several feet away from her, with his body glowing white and slashes traveling across the air like projectiles.

Realizing that she wasn't going to be fast enough to evade the attack, Tali hope that her armor could withstand the hit but it never came to that; Chikitikka took the blows for her. The Chrome Ronin's eyebrow raised at how the drone only took some external scratches from his Chi-slashes.

Then, in a blink, the Chrome Ronin disappeared.

Exploding back into existence right next to the drone, the Chrome Ronin stopped his chi-empowered dash by placing his foot against Chiktikka, which launched it into a group of ninja who began their relentless assault to hold it down. Tali fired a round at him, but he simply ducked out of the way, slicing her shotgun in half and thrust-kicking her into a wall, causing her to collapse to the floor coughing.

Witnessing the dangerous predicament that Tali was in, Garrus tried to fight his away out of the hordes of ninjas, but he was stuck over blocked off from her position by sheer numbers; ninjas literally trading their lives for their task. She was on her own.

As the Chrome Ronin approached the downed Quarian, he didn't seem to notice her Omni-tool glowing. As he began lifting his blade upwards, he was immediately blinded by a flash from Tali's Omni-tool, and missed his mark as a result.

Twisting the Chrome Ronin's arm behind him and h through the use of multiple shocks through his system, kept the Chrome Ronin incapacitated for just a few instances. "Chikitikka! Now!" Tali ordered Chikitikka to begin its assault. It fired, cutting through multiple ninjas in its path to blast the Chrome Ronin in the face.

Chrome turned to red as the Ronin began getting cooked alive in his own armor. Hisses of pain came out of the Chrome Ronin's throat as he began feel the heat touch his skin while over thirty-five thousand volts shot through his system. Ignoring the pain and focusing his lunar energies, he allowed it to erupted wildly out of his body, shattering both the area around them and the majority of his armor beyond his helmet. Recognizing the threat of the action a moment before its release, Tali threw up a defensive barrier while leaping away.

As he released the blast of pure energy, he directed the brunt of it forwards, foolishly, to where Garrus along where most of his men were. As the oncoming wave rushed over them, many turned to ash, while some collapsed dead with their insides shattered, a drone was sent slamming into a wall, and Archangel using a human shield to lessen the brunt of the impact.

Looking around for the accursed Quarian, the Chrome Ronin found one standing around, starring at him in shock and despair, much like that one time that Magento accidentally walked in on the Blob trying to whip his rear, but realizing his arms were to short to reach behind him.

"Wh-a-at's happening?" cried the Quarian, much like a passerby who took a wrong turn into a battlefield.

Instantly wrapping his hand around the back of the Quarians neck, then threw the smaller Quarian into the air before striking him three times in the chest before he could gain any altitude. Grabbing his leg before he could get too far, the Ronin yanked him back and slammed his knee into the Quarian's ribs, earning him several loud cracks and a terrible scream of pain.

"Why…why," the Quarian asked weakly.

"For the bounty on your head," said the Chorme Ronin charging his fist full of energy before bringing it down to gory results. "And more importantly, for ruining my armor!"

"Spirits!" Garrus gasped. "Why did you do that."

"What?' the Silver Ronin wondered at why everyone was questioning him for doing what was his job.

"You just murdered that poor defenseless Quarian," Garrus continued. "She didn't anything to do with this!"

"Ye-what?"

A shot rang through the air, the Chrome Ronin felt a few holes open up in his chest. Turning, he saw his target, unharmed with a smoking gun in her hands.

"He means that it's the wrong Quarian, you bosh'tet," Tali snarled.

"Wait, then who is this," the Chrome Ronin wondered, holding the limp Quarian corpse in his hands. "Oh damn, we did it again."

"That's another Quarian you- argh!" Tali almost shouted. "You murdered an innocent Quarian who just happened to walk in at the wrong time! And what do you mean by again?"

"….You all look so similar," the Chrome Ronin said defensively. "And we only got a picture of your mask, so…. We might have been killing anyone who looks like you."

Tali gasped in indignation. "Do we all look alike to you? Just how many did you kill?"

"We are the Hand," the Silver Ronin said. "We kill, not count... no more than ten."

"That explains the reports on the Quarian serial killings," Garrus muttered under his breath.

"I have a purple visor!" Tali growled. "I have a knife in my boot! Why did your species even develop eyes?"

The Chrome Ronin looked down at the random Quarian he murdered, and then at his actual target, still fuming furiously at him. Deciding that today just wasn't his day, he shrugged, foregoing the opportunity to retort, and lifted his hand into the sky, summoning more power from the his armor's lunar soul. It was time to end this.

A thought that went through Garrus's head as well as he drew his rifle, and an arm was eaten by a implosion bolt.

The Ronin looked at his stump still trying to draw power from the moon but unable to since it was doing more bleeding that generating.

"It is of little consequence that I lost my arm," the Ronin boasted lifting his other arm, trying to hide his horror and agonizing pain. "I shall recreate another one later from pure moon energy—"

Another resounding boom went off as his other arm went flying as well. This time, the arm landed next to Tali who stomped on it for good measure. Garrus winced as she shot him twice more, blowing off both his legs.

"Alright," the Ronin squealed. "You are supposed to attack when I finish this power-up. Have you no chivalry? No honor?"

"Shut up," Tali growled before attaching a proximity mine to the Ronin's groin.

"Wait!" the Ronin begged. "Don't leave me like this! At least finish the job!"

But she didn't, and walked away from the limbless failure that was her hunter.

"I'll bite your legs off! Come back!"

"Nice job back there," Garrus said, trying to get a response from his new Quarian accomplice. She didn't answer.

Tali's mind was a storm of anger and mistreatment, for all the attempts made on her life and all the rampant racism being leveled at the Quarians in general. Enough. No more nameless unfortunate Quarians who wander into random battlefield would have to die so horribly! The Hand wants to have her head? Fine, they can try taking it from her!

Walking further onwards and ignoring Garrus's calls for her to slow down, she walked into the streets with her shotgun raised, causing most of the shocked civilians in her path to scatter out of her way. She knew that more members of the hand will be coming for her soon, and she didn't want any bystanders around when the fighting began.

Surely enough, following the path of destruction wrought by the Quarian and the fleeing civilians screaming about a "shotgun wielding madbucket", the second wave of Hand reinforcements arrived.

It was between the edge of the southern residential district and the many lanes of traffic that they found her, flanked by a drone and a Turian, walking around like she didn't have a care in the would.

"I am Shadow Samurai!" shouted the man who pretty much described what he looked like. "Where is my brother, Chrome Ronin! What have you done with him!"

"It's too late," Tali said with a monotone voice. "He is already dead."

With a flash of her Omni-tool, an explosion was heard in the background, sending fire and flames surging towards the sky, shedding a disturbing illumination upon the Quarian, her drone, and her Turian companion. A Chrome codpiece collided on the helmet of the Shadow Samurai as it fell out of the air. Beyond anger, the Shadow Samurai felt fear at this seemingly harmless creature, and with a wave of her Omni-tool, she unleashed hell upon her foes.

Hacking random steam vents to explode with one hand and firing her shotgun wildly with her other, Garrus was certain that this was what Sovereign referred to as "leveling up" in that Galaxy of Fantasy game that it played all the time.

Shadow Samurai, unbothered by mere shotgun shots found himself moving forward to cut down the Quarian, but forced back by the multiple lances of energy coming from the drone.

Multiple cars, automatic ones devoid of passengers, were hacked to take kamikaze runs at him by the monster that was Tali'Zorah. Relentless in her assault, she did not merely stop at smashing the cars near him, but also dumping their contents out of their seats away from the battlefield, and then overloading the vehicles cores causing multiple biotic explosions to occur.

Steel and fire fell upon Hand ninjas who responded with anguished screams and sobs. Garrus gaped at the brutality that was occurring when Tali dumped a truck full of Thessian berries on several Hand that just weren't fast enough to get away. Most of them died on impact, while one, a nigh indestructible mutant pushed through the wreckage, only to have an allergic reaction to the berries and die from swelling up.

"Uh, Tali, calm down," Garrus spoke, warily trying to get his companion to tone down her violence. "At least leave me some."

Tali ignored him, choosing to continue her assault.

Watching his fellow ninjas get eradicated with such brutality brought terror into the heart of the Shadow Samurai. The contract said that she had no military history, or even a criminal record, and yet she was massacring her away through countless members of the Hand despite whatever countermeasures (dying) they attempted. It was almost as if she gained new capabilities as she went along.

A shield of pure darkness was formed by the Shadow Samurai to keep more of his men from being flatted but that only resulted in Tali hacking two trucks to ram the Hand from the other side.

Creating a tunnel of shadow, the Samurai yelled for his fellow ninjas to use the opportunity to charge the Quarian only to be annihilated from the front by the brutal firepower of Chiktikka. Turning to run, they could see another truck driving down towards them. The Shadow Samurai reluctantly let down his shield and ordered his men to scatter to the winds, away from the demon that turned the tables on them.

Trying to run himself, he witnessed multiple steam pipes explode, eradicating the Hand on scene before sending him sprawling. Coughing in agony, he began to crawl, cursing the fool who thought it would be good to link all of the Citadel's functions to a central network, unaware of the shotgun wielding figure that was hunting him through the ash.

Then, his armor locked up completely as its systems were infiltrated.

"You should have picked a better location to fight me," came the angered, youthful voice that had been pushed too far. "In this city, everything has a connection, linked to the connections on our wrists, well most of our wrists," She held up her Omni-tool, flaring orange in anticipation. "The moment you came after me was the moment you made an enemy of last bit of machinery on the Citadel."

"Tali no," Garrus said, holding her back. "Don't!"

"Why not," Tali hissed angrily. "So they can kill more Quarians that they mistake for me!"

"No, I meant, don't kill him, because I need to shot at least one," Garrus spoke with a hint of inadequacy. "You already got the rest."

"Oh," Tali said. "Go ahead then."

"What! No please! R-release the Blade Titans!" the Shadow Samurai blurted out into his helmets transmitter. "DO IT NOWAGGHHHH!"

The Samurai's voice faded as his head imploded inwards towards oblivion, leaving the crumpled metal of his helmet and dented armor behind.

"Satisfied?" Tali asked.

"Yeah," Garrus said. "You still haven't told me why the Hand is trying to kill you though."

"Yeah, I might have lost track of that topic between my landing and our battle with them," Tali replied. "Listen, I know you did not have to help me so I

"I thought it would be interesting. I was right," Garrus spoke. "Besides, what else am I going to do tonight?"

"Well," Tali mused. "You could help me save the Council from assassination."

"Save th- your telling me this now?" Garrus asked, surprised at the sheer magnitude of the situation she was embroiled in.

"We were busy earlier," she refuted.

"Just who is trying to kill them?" Garrus inquired.

Tali sighed. "Who isn't."

"You have a lot to explain," Garrus said as she turned to hack a passing sports car.

"I'll explain to on the way," Tali said. "And you are going to have to drive. I don't have a license."

Garrus cracked a huge grin. "Neither do I."

"Keelah."

Unbeknownst to them, in the distant horizon, a portal opened above traffic, and a thunderous impact resonated throughout the district.

And with that, three terrible shadows grew to their full heights, and many pants were soiled...

**Author's End-Rambles: **I return. More bite and swollen bits than man, but I return. While typing this first part towards destruction of the Presidium, I felt like I was a monster from a Cronenberg film, with my swollen bits smacking inaccurately against the keys while I was trying to make a coherent message come through. Despite this, I do apologize for being away from so long without saying anything but sometimes Mr. Brain wanders, when its not being a slave driver for my body. Anyway, the next part should be up shortly as the scene transitions away from the latter of half of why Tali was being hunted, to the eventual molestation of the Destiny Ascension. Until then, keep your buckets clean.


	9. Trouble on the Citadel Issue 4

**_Disclaimer: I don't own anything but my recently retained free will, and even then that might be merely a lie….ONTOTHESTORY_**

**Trouble on the Citadel Issue 4: Citadel's Purgatory**

"Wait," Fury held out his hand to stop Tali from continuing on with her story. His eyebrows furrowed and his jaw clenched, while his eyes narrowed dangerously on the turian and quarian duo before him. "I just got a report…from a source in Japan…that says a bird-creature with a bad skin condition, a curvy robot, and an existential man with a drone for a head were seen smashing through downtown Tokyo onto of a 'kaiju wannabe'."

He turned to glare venomously at Fin Fang Foom. "They said this Kaiju was tearing through buildings and vehicles alike while stuffing entire squads of the Japanese Defense Initiative down its pants." He then turned an eye to the Citadel Councilors. "They're also saying something about Citadel security forces currently trying to arrest Japanese citizens."

"So that's where the missing missing C-Sec forces went..." muttered Valern while trying to comprehend how a C-Sec battle unit found themselves light years away.

"Fin Fang Foom can explain!" the dragon cried out to deter the horrified expressions that everyone in the room was giving him, and to deflect any potential scandal that would ruin his space celebrity status. "Fin Fang Foom needed warriors to fight off Hollow Dragons Triad boss in his underwear."

"Oh well that explains everything," Stark spoke flatly. "I mean who doesn't have a Triad boss in their pants. Totally natural." Fin Fang Foom held out his giant clawed hand to hush the condensing lady of iron.

"Fin Fang Foom was not done explaining! Fin Fang Foom was forced to stuff triad boss into his underwear because he attacked Fin Fang Foom with his gang."

Stark starred blankly at the dragon for a moment. "Because that's a totally normal course of action for a monster to do: get jumped and exile the threat into your unmentionables so that they can stare at your dragon balls for the remainder of the time they are alive. Truly you are the patron saint of horrible punishments"

"Its is dragon tradition. Xenophobic humans won't get it," Fin Fang Foom defended, quite poorly. Forcing enemies into your pants would probably go over badly if he was honest and admitted it was some kind of weird fetish. And also admitting that he really didn't have balls.

"Racist? Me?" Stark smirked with a devious smile. "Hardly Mr. Dragon. However, considering that you only stick Asians down your pants, I am beginning to wonder if you have certain fetishes…"

Fin Fang Foom felt his jaw slacken as the more facts emerged to paint him in a negative light, facts that could irreparably damage his career as a space chef forever. Did he truly have an Asian pants imprisoning fetish?

"That's beside the point," Captain America stepped in, waving the Iron Lady back off to the side to help the Hulk and Thor try to dislodge the head of Fury's helicarrier from the Tower. "Look, I understand that this has been a stressful day for everyone—especially for you Councilors—but until we figure out everything that happened, there will be no finger pointing."

Everyone agreed that the Captain was the primary source of reason and logic among the humans, so they decided to heed her words without making a fuss. The night had gone on long enough and with far too many digressions.

"Very well," Fin Fang Foom groaned. "Fin will give you the full story on what happened tonight. It all started on Citadel's Purgatory…"

Far too many digressions…

...

_Top Floor of the Apex Tower in the Presidium,_

_ Hours ago…._

If Fin Fang Foom went back and told himself that live television would someday portray him in a positive light, he would have stuffed future him down his underwear in the past.

He was participating in the biggest cooking reality show that ever graced the Citadel: Citadel's Purgatory! A show so vicious and cutthroat in its competition that a three century veteran of the Krogan scald meat style was reduced to tears when Judge Gorda Ram'eys declared his smoked Varren steak mixed with Pavalan beans as "so goddamn terrible that my non-existent f #$sacks could have made better food," before continuing to destroy the Krogan's self confidence by declaring, thankfully through much network censorship, that "before considering the fact that she doesn't actually have any f #$ing bollocks, one must understand that even theoretical bollocks don't have hands, therefore marking the Krogan's effort as an absolute pile of shit that can be outmatched by a elderly Asari imaginarily teabagging random ingredients she found in the trash."

Then she ended her speech declaring the Genophage the second worst thing to ever happen to the Krogan.

The Krogan left weeping and never came back, and from then on, everyone knew that the stakes were high. But Fin Fang Foom was determined to win. Days turned to nights and nights turned to weeks as Fin Fang Foom worked tirelessly to create the perfect recipes ranging from soup with ingredients so rare that he literally had to kill sea monsters to find the proper parts for the most miniscule changes in smell, to barbequed meats, some from creatures that have only been discovered in the past few days.

Like the days that went by arduously, one by one, his competitors were exiled from the show under the cruel judgment of Ram'sey, but Fin persevered; through harsh words and plates of his hard made food being tossed back in his face for a single lettuce that was out of place, he held on. Reminding himself that he went through rougher times in the past when he used to cook for the Fantastic Four, where the Invisible Woman passive aggressively denounced his creations as unworthy until he finally broke down crying in frustration, Fin Fang Foom swore that no one would ever see tear roll down his scaly face again.

Finally, after months of agonizing struggle, the show, and Fin Fang Foom's efforts were approaching its glorious climax. All that stood between him and his rightful position as the Supreme Chef of the Galaxies was Ram'sey, and that sniveling rat, Fan Lang: a tenacious cook specializing in Chinese delicacies, and holding a great amount of disrespect towards everyone who wasn't him.

They were gathered atop the Apex Tower, a beacon of architectural marvel at the center of the Presidium's market district built like a spear with two transparent edges sticking out, and with a special studio at the very tip. It was a massive room of white marble, and everyone was clad in the finest dress wear, with Fin Fang Foom even taking special attention to shift his humanoid form into something more handsome than normal. He even wore he special purple underwear for the occasion.

Behind them, a cast with floating cameras, sounds, and Omni-boards for on the fly edit. Before them, an entire room of white greatness and two covered plates for ultimate victory. It was time for Fin Fang Foom to achieve his destiny.

"Chefs," Ram'sey announced in her usual tone of mock disinterest. "Bring up your final dishes."

"你等着瞧，死蜥蜴。最后胜利的肯定是俺老子！"Fan Lang hissed in mandarin. Fin Fang Foom hated him for that, and never understood why the stupid human couldn't just get a universal translator installed or take language lessons instead having a Volus translate everything he said. Still, it didn't take a master linguist to understand that the human was one of the "dicks" of the species, and never really meant anything well through his words.

"Fin Fang Foom will beat you, little man," the dragon shot right back with his teeth barred. "And then Fin Fang Foom will put you in his pants."

Fan Lang scowled and stormed off as the volus whispered what the dragon said to him in his ear. Picking up his covered dish and stomping up to the judges, Fan was ready to win this show, for prestige, for family honor, but most of all, for himself.

With a sharp flourish with his hands, Fan Lan yanked off the top lid shielding the greatness of his food from the eyes the judges. He smiled to his hearts content as their eyes widened at the sight of an entirely original dish.

Until Ram'sey's eyes went from a wide expression of shock to a narrowed, calculating squint.

"Human," she ordered, "bring that food over here. I would like to evaluate it. With my tongue."

The Volus whispered the matriarch's desires into the ear of Fan Lang, who nodded and viciously pulled off the lid in an overly flashy manner that knocked the poor Volus over when said action was completed. Eyes in the room widened, gasps were heard, nostrils flared!

And lo and behold, no one knew what the hell the human had cooked.

It was an oddly colored layer of rice that covered a ball of meat and vegetables on the inside, but no one could see beyond the layer of rice so explaining its composition in a visual format would be useless.

And besides, half of Fan Lang shtick was feeding the judges weird crap that failed to match with words other than meat thing with other edible bullshit attached.

"各位厨神们，请尝一口藩家拿手好作。吃完了后我保证您们会感到美味冲天，回味无穷！" declared Fan Lang gleefully, not noticing the fact that his boasts are going untranslated due to the volus's inability to properly translate the idiom that were used.

Narrowing her eyes at the dish, Ram'sey nodded to her fellow judges, a turian named Salous Colius and a drell with a singular name called Krolain, and took the plunge. Burying her teeth deep into the odd ball shaped food on her fork, Ram'sey swirled her tongue around it and took in the taste before swallowing. Her face went blank.

Everyone in the room held their breath as she internally processed her verdict. Salous saw her fury coming before anyone else in the room, but only by a few seconds, as when Ram'sey got pissed, she had more rage than a thousand asari maidens who were denied entrance to their favorite lingerie store.

"THIS F# $# * DISH TASTES LIKE A C# $# S #$$# HOOKERS V#$ #$ #$ THAT A BATARIAN JUST PISSED IN!" declared Ram'sey with all the restraint she failed to muster. Audible beeps were emitted at deafening frequencies from floating camera drones to cover up the curses to horrible to bear.

The cringing began as anyone who possessed ears covered them while Ram'sey launched into the most furious, venomous monologue of emotional destruction she had ever mustered; she sounded like Quicksilver mashing his fingers into an electronic doorbell but also if that doorbell would eventually cry.

"YOU ARE THE C#$# # GODESS-# #$ # INSULT TO FOOD! YOUR DIC# #$# LESS- YOU F# $- YOUR F #$#$ MOTHER-F# $LESS-AN ELCOR F# # $ MUST'VE F #$# $ A REALLY PIECE OF SH # $ # TO CREATE A F #$ CO ##$ $ OF F #$ #$ LIKE YOU!" Ram'sey howled, multiple veins popping in her eyes.

Fan Lang's lip began to quiver a bit, and his eyes began to mist. He didn't understand most of what was being said, but when some one mentions your mother loudly and angrily, its pretty clear that its likely not to praise you.

"IF WE SENT YOUR F# $#ING FOOD TO THE KROGANS WHEN THE CO #$# $ GODESSFU#$ $ERS REBELLED, THERE WOULD BE NO REBELLION; THEY WOULD BE TOO BUSY KILLING EACH OTHER TO GET TO THE NEAREST F# $#$ING SH #$# FILLED TOLIET TO RELEASE THEIR SH# $# AND F##$ #$ FROM EVERY HOLE IN THEIR F#$#ED BODY! OF COURSE THIS WOULD MAKE US F# $# $ LOSE WHEN THEY RUN OUT OF PLACE TO F# $# $ SH!# $ #$# AND START AIMING THEIR F# $# TOWARDS OUR F# $ #$S, DROWNING US IN A SEA OF P #$# $ AND ASS LIQUID!"

Tears rolled out Fan Lang's eyes as she roared ever louder in his face while his volus translated the numerous curses and insults as quick and best he could. Even Fin Fang Foom, who previously held nothing but contempt and loathing for the human was feeling a bit bad for him.

"BUT THAT'S WHAT A F## $ C #$ LIKE YOU WANTS, RIGHT! FOR US TO DROWN IN F #$# ING SH# #$ #! WHEN THIS SHOW F# $ING ENDS, I AM GOING TO KEEP A F #$#ING SAMPLE OF THIS DI# $ #$SODDEN AS ## $CRACK SHI# $# $# # FOR WHEN THE RACHNI COME BACK! THAT WAY, WE CAN F!$# $ING START A GENOCIDE WITHOUT USING OUR GUNS!"

Ram'sey let out a miserable breath and wiped the steaming sweat from her brow. "What I am trying to say, Fan Lang, is that your food feels like Thresher c)# $s mixed with the shredded skin of a diseased, and then a group of Elcors with stomach troubles dealt with their # #$ in my mouth."

Fan Lang could not contain his inner pain and abuse anymore and burst into tears, before running away from the room with his Volus in tow "你他妈得说什么！你们瞧不起我做的饭？你们这群王八蛋看不起我是不是！好。你不给老子他应得的，那你们就别怕我手狠！"Fan Lang snarled, sobbing at the judges and Fin Fang Foom on his way out.

No one really understood a single word of that.

"Fin?" Ram'sey asked. "What is he saying?"

"No idea," the dragon groaned lowly. "Fin Fang Foom believes its probably very insulting."

Ram'sey frowned. "I deduced as much. I suppose this means that he forfeits. So, this means you win." Fin Fang Foom hummed to himself, trying to process what was being told to him. "What?"

"You win." Ram'sey waved for the dragon to settle down.

"Fin Fang Foom hasn't presented his food yet," protested the proud dragon. "Spent a lot of time on this. At least try it."

"There is no point." Krolain yawned, wanting the day to end so that he could get paid already. Its not like the judges all wanted to be there anyway. "There is no one else for you to compete against, you won." It was a completely reasonable statement. Fin Fang Foom was the only competitor left, everyone else had fallen to the reckoning that was Ram'sey. Fin Fang Foom's large mouth opened and closed repeated in search of words to use as a barricade of protest to what was being told to him and he unconsciously began shifting larger and larger in his agitation.

This had the side effect of showing everyone his teeth.

At this point, the Judges really began to notice the numerous serrated teeth, each one large than the biggest blade that can be found on the Citadel. The noticed it starring them right in the face.

There is an undeniable sense of primal urgency when one notices biting bits that look as if they could be very persuasive in the separation of limbs from body, and also in drawing urine from an fearful bladder.

"I remember you being f #$ing smaller," Ram'sey said blankly. Fin Fang Foom snorted, "So did Fin, then a little alien told him that the great food is not needed." The three judges found themselves swallowing in sync, so they obliged him, and capitulated to him.

A gargantuan covered bowl was dragged over before the judges by five very strong Elcor, who strained in exertion despite their physicality. A great metallic reflection separated the final creation of Fin Fang Foom and the judges' eyes, as the dragon staggered over towards his final task, fighting both anxiety and excite along the way.

"Fin Fang Foom hopes this please the judges," Fin Fang Foom said, trying to give a smile, which only succeeded in furthering the deeply buried prey instinct to run the hell away from the giant monster with sharp teeth within all three judges.

Ram'sey looked uncertainly as Fin Fang Foom unveiled his mighty dish, and as soon as he did, jaws dropped. This response, usually an exaggeration used in reality television to build suspense before being cut away to a commercial, was entirely justified in this case.

After all, what else do you do when there is a barbecued Thresher Maw head brought before you.

"Fin," the Drell judge inquired, horrified. "Where did you get a Thresher's head."

"Got it," Fin Fang Foom stated simply.

"What? From who?" Ram'sey asked.

"Flew to Tuchanka between the film between episode eight and nine, and used a goat as bait," Fin Fang Foom said.

"And," asked Krolain, expecting more.

"Then it burst through the sand, and Fin got it." Fin Fang Foom failed to understand what the confusion was all about.

"No," Krolain started, "the Thresher…it…how did you get it to…did you have a group of hardened krogan hunting with you." This drew chuckles from Fin Fang Foom.

"Fin Fang Foom do not need small krogan. All Fin Fang Foom did is grab the worm and smash it against a rock until it stopped being a living worm." Ram'sey and felt her bowels loosen dangerously while Krolain quickly went over where the nearest exits were located. Salous meanwhile found horrible flashbacks to his childhood when his classmates would slam his face into the table repeatedly for scoring higher than them at alien biology.

All in all, bad memories leading to the general indication that they should appease the dragon with a proper win regardless of how bad his food could be considering the fact that he is dragon and they are tiny prey.

With her hands shaking and her lips quivering, Ram'sey thrust out her hand and dug her spoon into the massive eyeball of the thresher head. "Here we # $ing go," she gasped in a breathless whisper and pushed the spoon slowly into her mouth with such a fatal expression that it was as if she was forced to plunge a blade into her own heart.

Then her eyes opened wide. Then she chewed. Then she swallowed.

"Fin Fang Foom," she started, watching the hopeful dragon's eyes light up. "That wasn't good..." the dragon's jaw dropped and his heart broke, while Krolain began kicking her shin under the table as a last futile curse at her for getting them killed; by this point Salous was already halfway to the exit. "IT WAS KROGANF# $ING C#$## $NIFFLING FANTASTIC."

Whiplash struck all in the room with frightening effects! The dragon threw his hands up in jubilee, inadvertently smashing through the ceiling and sending debris everywhere. Krolain let out a relieved sigh at his presumed demise being adverted, and Salous ran straight into the door, the concept of opening before leaving no longer present within his mind.

"Fin Fang Foom greatest chef on Citadel! FIN FANG FOOM IS THE GREATEST COOK THERE IS!"

"Well, technically, I am still th—URK!" choked Ram'sey as Krolain quickly caught her throat in a vice like grip to save all their lives from her foolish pride. Her statement went unnoticed from the dragon and the staff and crew breathed easy as Fin Fang Foom celebrated joyously. Nothing could ruin his good mood now.

Which was why Fan Lan had to come back into the studio, just as Fin Fang Foom was having his most triumphant moment.

"就是他！" Fan Lan, who was now accompanied by a large group of men, cried out with an accusatory finger pointed at Fin Fang Foom as a large mob of shady looking humans and a single volus emerged out of the door behind him.

The men were thugs, murders, assassins, and killers, and this was known to almost everyone in the room. How? Because normal folk don't have demonic tattoos and weird eyes for giggles.

To say that group was a diverse bunch was just not giving enough credit to the rag tag band of psychotic thugs that accompanied Fan Lan. There were men and women who had animal parts grafted onto their body, but more along the lines of a fourth grade art project that a professional graft job. Several thugs were covered in living tattoos of demons and other unspeakable horrors that danced across their bodies and lit up the room.

At the very head of the thugs was a man with eerie green tattoos that slithered across his body like a coil of mystical serpents, while his eyes shone a dull grassy haze at all that was in front of him. His wrinkled skin and aged face told tale of his age, but even older was his coat, tattered, torn, but still overflowing with power carved into it in a form of writing so dead that modern Chinese scholars would have called it another set of "turtle shell carvings" so they wouldn't have to write another dissertation on what they failed to translate.

Flanking him were two individuals that were equally weird. One was a man with wires and other mechanisms going off all over his body like he was some kind of 80s sci-fi prop. The other, was a young woman in a long dark dress who had wisps of unnatural power flowing up her. Staying in touch with the theme of horrible horror, she had body of a grade-schooler and the eyes of a corpse.

Even that many men active, their members had yet to show themselves in full. Unbeknownst to everyone in the room, outside the top of the tower were three cloaked _Yiu Ling _stealth ships awaited the order to blast the tower to bits.

The Traids were locked and loaded for war.

See, Fan Lang was an indeed giant whiny ponce, but he was also the heir to the Hollow Dragons, one of the major ten Triads that operated on Earth. His father was a man known to his family as 永乐爷,which directly translated meant something like "always laughing grandfather". To the rest of the world, he was the Lord of the Rapacious Mists.

This meant lots of guns, men, and powers at the disposal of one very spoiled child, and it would have likely spelled trouble to almost anyone one who came head to head with them. Dragons however see things a bit differently than most men.

"Only so many men?" Fin Fang Foom grumbled out loud, disappointed at the turnout for his head. He let out a heated gust of wind out his nostrils that washed over the rest of the room, much like the waves would a sailor about to drown.

By this point, crew members of Citadel's Purgatory began to vacate the premises, abandoning the judges, who were frozen in horror, to their fates. The air grew cold and the lights grew ever dimmer. Whispers of supernatural elements found their way into every ear present.

And then the tension reached a breaking point.

"我操，" started Grass-Eyes losing composure first, "你说龙欺负你，没想到是个真龙。"The rest of the men looked to each other with uneasy eyes as they began to realize just how unprepared their lieutenant was about dealing with an actual dragon.

"Fin Fang Foom would ask you to leave right now," spoke Fin without even shifting his eyes towards the menacing crew of scoundrels. "The awarding and praising of Fin's food is not done."

"去他妈的！"cried Fan Lan waving his fist at the dragon. "兄弟们，给我扁！" Fan's idea was that they could all jump the dragon at once so they could overwhelm the dragon with sheer numbers. He was not a tactician.

"Alright…I see that you gentlemen have your grievances," spoke Ram'sey, with probably the softest tone she ever took in her life, "but for the LOVE OF F# $LICKING GODDESS LET US GO!" The softness did not last.

Members of the gang glared at her with confused and vicious eyes. "她说啥？" asked one gang member, completely confused. "你问我我问谁？得了呗，我们这谁会说英文？" Fan Lan let out a loud whine. "他们他妈外星人咋么听得懂英文？的了，把那个矮胖子给我带过来！"

Screams of the unfortunate volus that accompanied Fan Lan erupted from the back of the entrance where the gang was crowded around. It took them approximately three seconds to get him from the back to the front. He was tossed.

"Oh…ow…please earth clan, no more!" begged the volus, struggling to get up off his feet. Multiple howls and orders came from the lips of Fan Lan and his men, ordering him to deliver their message to Fin Fang Foom and the judges, lest he wanted to find out how they planned to make him even shorter.

Like a rational creature, the poor volus obliged.

"He," the volus pointed at Fan Lan, "wants the award for Citadel's Purgatory."

Fin Fang Foom glared and wordlessly shoved the tiny prize down into his purple pants. This struck the room with awed silence. "太他妈噁心了。"

The volus sighed, "Fan Lan says its disgusting. He likely wants you to take it out."

"I'm sorry," Salous muttered barely loud enough to be heard. "I—I—can we go? We don't need to be here."

"Unfortunately you do," the volus said glumly. "I think Fan wants you all to stay so that he can have you all redo the awarding ceremony." Ram'sey sighed. "We didn't even get to that bit before everything was ruined."

"I just wanted to make enough to buy a new house," muttered Krolain as Salous began to shake violently next to him. "This is f #$ flaps." Ram'sey stated quite simply.

"Enough!" Fin Fang Foom bellowed. The room grew silent as the stealth ships out the window began priming their deconstructor missiles and numerous powers flared up in the room in fright and defense against the dragon. "Fin Fang Foom will never give up his cooking position, or surrender to small pathetic humans," said Fin as he narrowed his eyes at Fan Lan. "Fin Fang Foom has earned his place in Citadel history. Fin is best cook there ever was."

"不给是不是！好！很好！同志们，把它的皮给我剥下来！" Fan Lan howled to his very unwilling gang and a confused volus. "Should I tell them that you want your men to peel ski—" the volus was shot in the face by Fan Lan before the sentence could end.

As the gang made their very unwilling advance upon the immense presence that was Fin Fang Foom, a bone shaking laugh that rumbled and echoed through the room, passing through the bodies of the small creatures before him. "Fools, walking to your deaths into the jaws of Fin Fang Foom. Did you not hear the stories of me, of my awakening before your time? I have navigated my path through the stars beyond, survived journeys untold. The old myths said my limbs could shatter mountains, and my back scraped the sun. The men of the twentieth century spoke my name in fear and despair…Heroes of immeasurable power beyond mine faced me, and yet…Fin Fang Foom still draws breath. Tell me, little ones, how are you supposed to succeed where the Hulk failed, when the Iron Man failed, where the combined threats and the chaos of the last century failed?"

Some of the meeker members of the gang were backing off now, but they did not make two steps before they fell to the ground, deprived of spirit and life, with their life force flowing to the corpse-eyed girl. Though the rest did tremble, the stood their ground under the command of their foolish young master, not because they respected him, but because they feared the Lord of the Rapacious Mists more than any.

"别怕兄弟们！" Fan Lan tried to rally his men. The judges hid under their desks and Fin Fang Foom gently removed a massive cooking knife he had hidden in his apron. Grass-Eyes nodded to their hidden ships outside the window, and deconstructer missiles rained down upon the Apex Towers.

Deconstructer missiles were a favored weapon of those who preferred to operate with discretion in areas they should not be. Noiseless but still destructive, the idea was made when a particularly brilliant group of AIM scientists managed to create a group of short lived nanites that would be scattered by a micro-missile that would then pop with enough force to scatter the nanites across the target.

The Apex Tower, on the other hand was a creation by a joint Asari/Turian company known similarly as Apex. They were deserving of the title in many projects like Omni-tools and other such items. Unfortunately, Nanite defense was not one of those sectors they specialized in.

Almost immediately, the top of the tower gave way and massive holes began to emerge as the tiny machines chewed through the materials at a frightening pace. The deconstruction was going along so fast that even debris failed to escape the gluttonous little machines.

As this was happening, dead spirits rose from all corners of the Citadel, rushing towards the top of the Apex Tower, by the hand and the will of one with skin fair, but mind foul; the corpse-eyed little girl smiled sweetly. The howls in the air erupted into louder and louder intensities as more spirits rushed into the fray; objects began to float on their own will, doors opened and closed at their own volition, and a mysterious warmth began to spread from most of the judges' pants.

With the beckoning of the Corpse-Eyed one, windows exploded and objects shot across the room through supernatural whispers.

The tattoos on the many criminals flared to life as it danced across their body, granting the men and women with the ink a special endowment of chi-energy to use in a myriad of ways. The man of wires let loose with with technological empowered thunderbolts and lightening in a very, very frightening display of power.

With the posing of demonstration of the fighting force before him coming to an end, Fan Lan stood up with his teeth barred and chest out letting out several arrogant laughs. He held out his hand, believing that he had successfully and completely managed to intimidate the dragon.

Fin Fang Foom yawned, and took a breath. When it was released, things began to melt.

The uninformed usually believe that Fin Fang Foom, due to his resemblance to dragon and the color of the mists that flooded like an unending stream, breaths fire. In defense of that assumption, the mists do the task of burning quite well.

As the corrosive breath washed over the front layers of triad cannon fodder, melting some outright while only burning a few others who were stronger in power or will, Grass-Eyes moved forth into battle and the men followed.

More wind than flesh, he moved between the smallest openings between his fellow thugs, in a few cases drifting through them and leaving them to collapse as husks drained of their chi: life-force that allows men to be more than the limitations of their physical boundaries.

Medical insurance while working with the Hollow Dragons was quite minimal.

Like fleshy bullets trying to fight a storm, the many Triads leap into battle up close against Fin Fang Foom in a display of suicidal fervor or absolute bravery. It mattered not as his large claws swiped through the air faster than most eyes could track and left many severed.

As the first wave fell, the ones coming from behind felt themselves growing fearful of the mighty creature that stood before them, now in a fighting stance that beckoned for battle. Grass-Eyes snorted and walked through

Ignoring the wariness flowing through him, Grass-Eyes encroached upon Fin Fang Foom, intent on tearing the dragon inside out by phasing through him.

The intention was clever, but the idea was old. Fin Fang Foom knew what was coming from the moment he saw Grass-Eyes's flesh give way to mystical gas. "Fin sees the Lord of the Greedy Mists has taken a new disciple."

Grass-Eyes ignored the surprise within him and flowed forward, like a river to drown, like a storm to swallow. He reached Fin Fang Foom with such force that the judges behind him were thrown through the air before finding a spot on the wall to be embedded.

"F#$#$ A #$#$ CO #$ # ANUS!" groaned Ram'sey incoherently.

Ignoring the plight of the judges, Fin Fang Foom held still before the oncoming storm and waiting. Then, when Grass-Eyes was a chin hair away, Fin Fang Foom flapped his wings once and shifted his size.

As the strong gust of wind scattered the focus of the malicious Grass-Eyes, his mental will unable to keep hold of his gaseous form. By the time Grass-Eyes tried to recollect his senses and renew his assault, he found that the massive Fin Fang Foom was nowhere to be seen.

He was then roundhouse kicked in the jaw from behind.

Tumbling, rolling, and bleeding all at the same time, Grass-Eyes skid across the room like a barrel shot out of a cannon, scrapping hard against the floor before coming to a halt before horrified mass of men that expected him to prevail.

Fan Lan suppressed his fear at the defeat of one of his father's minor lieutenants and cried for the rest to charge the now human sized, but no less intimidating dragon. Fin Fang Foom gave an especially toothy grin and curled one claw to call for fools to come.

Hissing in fury and embarrassment Grass-Eyes leaped back on his feet, and this time he was joined by Wired-Man and Corpse-Eyes. Their eyes all flash in union as their chi and minds connected. They would face the dragon together.

As Grass-Eyes turned to life taking gas again, Corpse-Eyes willed her wisps to draw the spirits of the long dead of the Citadel to her, and Wires disappeared with a mob of lesser Triads into another realm.

Then everything struck at once.

A thunderstorm exploded into existence just above where Fin Fang Foom stood and the mob, descended like the thunder afterward. The first layer of the Triads was obviously fodder, meant to shield the real threat behind from the fury of Fin Fang Foom's limbs and vicious breath.

Flowing through chi-enhanced blows like water, Fin Fang Foom struck out slicing veins, kicking joints apart, breaking limbs to a cacophony of screams. Centuries of martial arts and sheer power were not about to be overwhelm by mere numbers.

With a sudden flash, Wires shot through several of his own men, frying them utterly as his fist shot down towards the throat of Fin Fang Foom. The block landed with a loud resounding impact, and static filled the air.

Fin Fang Foom had caught the fist while he was looking away. Wires smiled, all was going according to plan.

As Fin Fang Foom's leg swung around in fluid arc to split wires at the waist, he found that the man had already disappeared from the spot and his leg was held in place by a very sentient mist. Grass-Eyes was upon him.

Shifting back into his massive form again, Fin Fang Foom did not stop this time at merely large, but truly massive. Flapping his growing wings as dozens of feet were added to his size, Fin Fang Foom forced Grass-Eyes back into his tangible form.

But the man was smiling. All was going according to plan.

Sliding back with his right foot bracing hard against the tearing marble of the floor, Grass-Eyes planted weight and force down on his hind leg and swept it forward, dragging entire chunks of the floor as he swung it into the face of Fin Fang Foom.

Ignoring the dust and debris that bounced off his hardened scales, the dragon snorted unimpressed at the meager rebuttal of the little man. But beyond the shield of dust and marble that obfuscated the dragons vision, the Corpse-Eyed girl pushed past the rest and her mouth opened to deliver an inhumane howl. The supernatural whispers came louder and spirits began to reveal themselves.

"Oh, what the bu# $ #y f# $," hissed Ram'sey, now detached from where she was lodged in the wall from the impact.

The immaterial souls of multiple species from asari to krogan erupted into existence in loud protests all across the room at the beckoning of the horrifying youth. She whistled out tauntingly towards Fin Fang Foom as she called the spirits to her with a single wave.

"杀，" she spoke plainly.

Fin Fang Foom scowled and braced for proper combat. Spirits were always unpredictable foes, and the realm beyond death held dangers at every turn for the living. He braced for an attack that would never come.

"Wwwwwwhhhhhaaaatttt the spiiiiirriiiitttts?" wailed a miserable turian ghost in confusion in confusion. Corpse-eyes frowned and the wisps around her drew in on the ghost as she began to directly enforce her will upon it.

"Why were we awakened!" cried an agonized Turian spirit, forced into involuntary limbo.

"杀，" the Corpse-Eyes demanded of her spiritual slaves again, putting even more willpower into her command.

Her power was not the issue. The problem was that merely having the ability to bind the dead to your will is nice and all, but that does absolutely nothing to solve any preexisting language barriers that would have plagued interactions regardless of life or death.

To put this into simpler terms, a dead sentient that never got to learn what human speech in life, deprived of the translation devices that were available in life, would have no clue what a human was shouting at them no matter what was done.

"What does she want…" moaned a fallen asari, drawn into limbo and quite confused about her state of existence. "We have been summoned to purpose without orders. Why must our misery persist."

Once again Corpse-eyes forced her mental commands into the spirits around her, and made sure she focused all the way through this time. Unfortunately, though the images and words of what she wanted the ghosts to were delivered to the souls of the dead, the fact that if a spirit doesn't know Chinese, it just doesn't know Chinese.

Fan Lan and the rest starred on in blankly, waiting for her next move. The judges moved closer to the doors. Fin Fang Foom started tapping his feet. Sweat began to drip down Corpse-Eye's brow.

Terrible problems usually arise when one fails to properly compel them into action, and said problems typically result with the headlines "possession", "body murder", "mind bender", and most commonly "Why Conrad! What did you do?!" Realizing the fact would be the same with alien ghosts as well, the youth decided to do the first sensible thing in months: she dropped the horror movie villain act and bolted for the shattered windows and jumped out, leaving everyone else behind.

She later took her estranged mother's advice and went back to school to learn a trade. She became a very successful accountant.

However, despite how things turn out well for the girl later, the spirits in the room grew unruly and mad to their awoken but undirected existence, lights began to flicker as objects and many of the unfortunate living found themselves soaring through the air by no will of their own.

This meant spirits became angry poltergeists in their despair, which lead to possessions, and general mayhem. For the first time in history, the Citadel had a ghost problem. The supernatural energy exploded from the top of the Apex Tower, washing over the entire station as numerous ghosts scatted to seek where they used to live.

Meanwhile, within the tower, a mess ensued. The first problem was the possessing of Yiu Ling stealth ships and the pilots. Though ghosts didn't understand human language very well, the basic commands and controls aboard a human ship were not too far separated from ones of Citadel design due to the similar builds of body. This meant that deconstructers started flying everywhere indiscriminately.

Numerous Triads were eaten away almost instantly, while more found their own arms being taken over by multiple ghost simultaneously resulting in spiritual brawls in singular bodies as arm began to fight butt-cheek for sole dominance of the human flesh. Fan Lan ran screaming from the carnage while Wires and Grass-Eyes flanked his escape, fending off wayward spirits with chi strikes and trans-dimensional shocks. Fin Fang Foom just watched.

"Fin hates human so much."

It was at this moment that the nanites finally finished eating the entire top of the tower, exposing all the chaos to the outside Citadel. C-Sec and reporters began to converge on the scene, unknowing of the dangers that were around.

They quickly found out just how dangerous as the nanites began eating directly downwards through the tower, bifurcating it in two.

"Fin!" cried Ram'sey. "If we f#2$ ing die, you'll never be revealed as a proper f #$ing space chef!" More pops went unheard as the ships fired another volley of deconstructors, and the two halves of the tower fell downwards upon the city, sending the judges into a long drop. Fin Fang Foom dove after the judges for hopes of certification, Fan Lan and the remainder of the Triads descended down after the trophy in the dragon's underwear.

Keeping the judges away from the bits of falling building that were soon devoured as well, Fin Fang Foom dropped down racing the deconstruction of the building itself. At the very bottom, the masses that were inside had long since began their escape when the first blows were struck, leaving few bystanders in true danger.

Getting ever closer to the judges, Fin Fang Foom reach out to grasp them in his hands, but felt a ticklish feeling on his hindlegs. Fan Lan had begun to infiltrate his inner sanctum! The bastard was trying to get into his pants.

Turning around to blow corrosive mist at the fools senseless enough to bother him, Fin Fang Foom swiped out with his tail and hind legs at the many men coming down after him in free-fall.

A few took the full blast mist before Wires warped in a large metallic shield from somewhere else in the universe, shielding him and the rest from the wave of death. Shooting past the rest of the lesser Triads, Grass-Eyes returned to assist his young master with a chi-infused kick to the back of Fin Fang Foom's head.

With his large skull snapping forward from the sudden impact, Fin Fang Foom found the judges falling out of reach again as disorientation distracted him. Fan Lan and a few of his men weaseled their way further inwards past the outer folds of his underwear.

Grasping the screaming judges, kicking at the annoying humans, and desperately shielding his face from Citadel reporters that sped downwards along with the brawl, Fin Fang Foom wondered how his life had once again, been ruined by the humans. Surely his best night could get no worse than this.

And then a giant samurai robot slammed right into Wires, and everything exploded in an ocean of lightning.

…

"Varren shit!" cried Sparatus interrupting Fin Fang Foom in the middle of his story.

"Its true!"

"I cannot believe that some human exploding with lightning would remove an entire portion of the market district and an entire C-Sec battle unit. And Ghosts! Outlandish!" Everyone starred the turian Councilor who continued to call bullshit to a dragon about ghosts. It wasn't a good picture for anyone's sanity.

"Well," chimed in a slightly guilty Tali. "The Blade Titan was our fault."

"In our defense we would have never guessed that running a robot into the human with Wires was going to teleport us to Japan," Garrus defended.

"Huh. Its all starting to make sense now," said Fury with growing certainty. He missed the dirty looks that that Councilors shot him.

"No," Tevos spoke. "No. Nothing makes any sense at all."

"It would make more if you let us finish what happened on our end," answered Garrus.

"EVERYONE IS UNDER ARREST!" cried a muffled voice that finally made its way out of Fin Fang Foom's pants. A metallic limb pushed through the folds on the edges of Fin Fang Foom's thighs and with a mighty heave, a cyborg plopped down into the middle of the room with a large photon magnum pointed at the Councilors.

"Public Security! Sector 9! Major Kasumi Goto! Everyone put your hands where I can see them!"

And for the first time in history, the first intergalactic event became emerged between the Citadel and the divided Humanity.

"Oh spirits damn us all…"

_Author's Shameful Meat-Movements: Holy crap I was gone for a long time. It felt like three days, and then it was like a wolverine with the mind of mad scientist stole my bollocks and ran forward in time to use them to create an army of mentally lacking minions to claim the world and I had to chase after him because my bollocks are my bollocks and I like my bollocks. Anyway, I lost months in the desperate attempt to save the world from dumber mes and crazy wolverine that I realized there was one thing important I was doing. Work! And also this thing. Anyway, with my happy bits now liberated and free of badger-creature like tyranny, I resolve to continue on with arc with due haste. Much has been written, but more must be added to the cobwebs. Join us in a few days when __**The WAY OF THE TELEPORTING DRAGON PANTS STRIKES JAPAN WITH TERRIBLE FISTS OF Fury **__comes your way. Don't worry, I built a gate around my bollocks this time, I will be staying where I am for now. Feel free to like, hate, shred, and generally abuse me to your heart's content._


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